IRVING  BACHELI 


[See  page  56 
"SHE    WISHED    ME   TO    SUGGEST    SOMETHING    FOR    HER    TO    DO" 


c< 


CHARGE  IT 


OR 


KEEPING   UP  WITH    HARRY 


A  story  of  fashionable  extravagance  and  of  the 

successful  efforts  to  restrain  it  made 

by  The  Honorable  Socrates  Potter 

the   genial  friend  of  Lizzie 

BY 

IRVING    BACHELLER 

ILLUSTRATED 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW    YORK     AND      LONDON 
MCMXII 


BOOKS  BY 
IRVING  BACHELLER 

CHARGE  IT.     Ill'd.     12mo net  $1.00 

KEEPING  UP  WITH  LIZZIE.     Ill'd.     Post  8vo  net  1.00 

EBEN  HOLDEN.     Ill'd.     Post  8vo 1.50 

Edition  de  Luxe  2.00 

EBEN  HOLDEN'S  LAST  DAY  A-FISHING.     16mo  .50 

DRI  AND  I.     Ill'd.     Post  8vo 1.50 

DARRELL  OP  THE  BLESSED  ISLES.     Ill'd.     Post 

8vo 1.50 

VERGILIUS.     Post  8vo 1.35 

SILAS  STRONG.     Post  8vo 1.50 

THE  HAND-MADE  GENTLEMAN.     Post  8vo     .     .  1.50 

IN  VARIOUS  MOODS.     Poems.     Post  8vo     .     net  1.00 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK 


COPYRIGHT,    1012.    BY   HARPER    &    BROTHERS 


PRINTED   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES   OF   AMERICA 
PUBLISHED   SEPTEMBER,    1912 

I  M 


TO   MY   DEAR   FRIEND 

LEDYARD     PARK     HALE 

ANOTHER    HONEST   LAWYER 


M15577 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGB 

I.  IN  WHICH  HARRY  SWIFTLY  PASSES  FROM  ONE 

STAGE  OF  His  CAREER  TO  ANOTHER    .        i 

II.  WHICH  BEGINS  THE  STORY  OF  THE  BISHOP'S 

HEAD n 

III.  WHICH  is  THE  STORY  OF  THE  PIMPLED  QUEEN 

AND  THE  BLACK  SPOT 33 

IV.  IN  WHICH   SOCRATES  ENCOUNTERS   "NEW 

THOUGHT"  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  HAIR       45 

V.  IN  WHICH  SOCRATES  DISCUSSES  THE  OVER 

PRODUCTION  OF  TALK 55 

VI.  IN  WHICH  BETSEY  COMMITS  AN  INDISCRETION      69 

VII.  IN  WHICH  SOCRATES  ATTACKS  THE  WORST 

DOERS  AND  BEST  SELLERS     ....      75 

VIII.  IN  WHICH  SOCRATES  ATTACKS  THE  HELMET 

AND  THE  BATTLE- AX 84 

IX.  IN  WHICH  SOCRATES  INCREASES  THE  SUPPLY 

OF  SPLENDOR 91 

X.  IN  WHICH  SOCRATES  BREAKS  THE  DRAG  AND 

TANDEM  MONOPOLY  IN  POINTVIEW      .      99 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

XI.  IN  WHICH  SUNDRY  PEOPLE  MAKE  GREAT 

DISCOVERIES 106 

XII.  IN  WHICH  HARRY  is  FORCED  TO  ABANDON 

SWAMP  FICTION  AND  LIKE  FOLLIES  AND 
TO  STUDY  THE  GEOGRAPHY  AND  NA 
TIVES  OF  A  LAND  UNKNOWN  TO  OUR 
HEIRISTOCRACY 118 

XIII.  IN  WHICH  THE  MINISTER  GETS  INTO  LOVE 

AND  TROUBLE 127 

XIV.  IN  WHICH  SOCRATES   DISCOVERS  A  NEW 

FOLLY 139 

XV.  IN  WHICH  HARRY  RETURNS  TO  POINTVIEW 

AND  GOES  TO  WORK 148 

XVI.  WHICH   PRESENTS   AN   INCIDENT   IN  OUR 

CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  NEW  NEW  ENG 
LAND  171 

XVII.  WHICH   PRESENTS   A   DECISIVE   INCIDENT 

IN  OUR  CAMPAIGN  AGAINST  OLD  NEW 
ENGLAND 176 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

"SHE    WISHED    ME     TO     SUGGEST     SOMETHING 

FOR   HER  TO  DO" Frontispiece 

" '  WHAT  DIDN'T  THEY  SAY?    THEY  FLEW  AT 

ME  LIKE   WILDCATS '  " Facing  p.    60 

« i  IT,g  THE  VAN  ALSTYNE  CREST,'  I  SAID.      'IT'S 

A  PROOF  OF  RESPECTABILITY"'  ...  "  86 
"RADIANT  IN  SILK,  LACE,  DIAMONDS,  PEARLS, 

AND  RUBIES" "  94 

"HARRY'S  PET  COLLIE  HAD  COME  UP  TO  THE 

BACK  DOOR  WITH  A  HUMAN   SKULL  IN 

HIS  MOUTH" "  148 

"HE  LOOKED  LIKE  A  MAN  WITH  A  WOODEN 

LEG"  "         188 


FOREWORD 

IT  may  interest,  if  it  does  not  comfort, 
the  reader  to  know  that  this  little  story 
is  built  upon  facts.  The  ride  of  Harry, 
the  hundred-dollar  pimple,  the  psycholog 
ical  hair,  the  downfall  of  Roger,  all  hap 
pened,  while  the  Bishop's  Head  is  one  of 
the  possessions  of  a  New  England  family. 

I.  B. 


"CHARGE  IT" 


IN  WHICH  HARRY  SWIFTLY  PASSES  FROM  ONE 
STAGE    OF    HIS    CAREER   TO    ANOTHER 

"TTARRY  and  I  were  waiting  for  his 
1  1  motor-car,"  said  the  Honorable  So 
crates  Potter.  "He  couldn't  stand  and 
wait — that  would  be  losing  time — so  we 
kept  busy.  Went  into  the  stores  and 
bought  things — violets,  candy,  golf-balls, 
tennis  -  shoes,  new  gloves,  and  neckties. 
Harry  didn't  need  'em,  but  he  couldn't 
waste  any  time  and — 
'"There's  the  car!' 

"In    each    store    Harry    had    used    the 
magic  words,  'Charge  it,'  and  passed  on. 


IT' 


"We  were  going  over  to  Chesterville 
to  settle  with  the  contractor  who  had  built 
his  father's  house.  We  had  an  hour  and 
four  minutes  in  which  to  do  it  all,  and  then  — 
the  6.03  express  for  New  York.  Harry  had 
to  get  it  to  be  in  time  for  a  bridge  party. 

"We  climbed  in.  Harry  grabbed  the 
wheel.  The  gas  -lever  purred,  the  gears 
clicked,  the  car  jumped  into  motion  and 
rushed,  screeching,  up  the  hill  ahead  of  us, 
shot  between  a  trolley-car  and  a  wagon, 
swung  around  a  noisy  runabout,  scared  a 
team  into  the  siding,  and  sped  away. 

"The  town  behind  us!  Country-houses 
on  either  side!  A  bull-dog  in  the  near 
perspective!  He  set  himself,  made  a  rush 
at  us,  as  if  trying  to  grab  a  wheel  off  the 
car,  and  the  wheel  got  him.  We  flushed  a 
lot  of  chickens.  The  air  seemed  to  be  full 
of  them.  Harry  waved  an  apology  to  the 
farmer,  as  if  to  say: 

"'Never  mind,  sir,  I'm  in  a  hurry  now. 
Take  my  number  and  charge  it.' 


FROM   ONE   STAGE   TO   ANOTHER 

"'He  struck  a  fowl,  and,  turning,  I  saw 
a  whirl  of  feathers  in  the  air  behind  us  and 
the  farmer's  fist  waving  above  the  dust. 

"Harry  would  have  paid  for  the  dog 
and  the  fowl  in  money  but  not  in  time — 
not  even  in  a  second  of  time!  Harry  had 
an  engagement  for  a  bridge  party  and  must 
catch  the  6.03  express. 

"A  man  on  a  bicycle  followed  by  a  big 
greyhound  was  just  ahead.  We  screeched. 
The  man  went  into  the  ditch  and  took  a 
header.  The  greyhound  didn't  have  time 
to  turn  out  then.  He  bent  to  the  oars 
until  he  had  gained  lead  enough  to  save 
himself  with  a  sidelong  jump  into  the 
buttercups. 

"'Charge  it!' 

"The  needle  on  the  speedometer  wavered 
from  fifty  to  fifty-five,  then  struck  at  sixty, 
held  a  second  there,  and  passed  it.  Gnats 
and  flies  hit  my  face  and  stung  like  flying 
shot.  The  top  of  the  road  went  up  in 
a  swirl  of  dust  behind  us.  I  hung  on,  with 
3 


-CHARGE    IT' 

my  life  in  my  trembling  hands.  We  zipped 
past  teams  and  motor-cars. 

"We  filled  every  eye  with  dust  and  every 
ear  with  screeches  and  every  heart  with  a 
swift  pang  of  terror. 

"'Charge  it!' 

"A  rider  with  a  frightened  horse  raced 
on  ahead  of  us  to  the  next  corner.  We  sped 
across  the  track  into  Chesterville  and — 

"'Hold  up!    There's  the  office  ahead.' 

"The  levers  move,  down  goes  the  brake, 
and  we're  there. 

"'Eleven  miles  in  fourteen  minutes!' 
Harry  exclaims,  as  I  spring  out  and  hurry 
to  the  door.  It  was  really  sixteen  min 
utes,  but  I  always  allow  Harry  a  slight  dis 
count. 

"'Not  in!'  I  shout,  in  a  second. 

"'Not  in— heart  of  Allah!— where  is  he?' 

"'At  the  Wilton  job  on  the  point.' 

'"We'll  go  get  him.' 

'"You  go;  I'll  wait  here.' 

"Away  he  rushes — I  thank  God  for  the 
4 


FROM  ONE  STAGE  TO  ANOTHER 

brief  respite.  This  high  power  encourages 
great  familiarity  with  the  higher  powers. 
But  the  Creator's  name  is  used  here  in  no 
light  or  profane  spirit,  let  me  say.  In  each 
case  it  is  only  a  brief  prayer  or,  rather,  the 
beginning  of  a  prayer  which  one  has  not 
time  to  finish.  It  is  cut  short  by  a  new 
adventure. 

"I  say  to  myself  that  I  shall  not  ride 
back  with  Harry.  No,  life  is  still  dear  to 
me.  I  will  take  the  trolley.  And  yet — 
what  thrilling,  Jove-like,  superhuman  devil 
try  it  was!  I  light  a  cigar  and  sit  down. 
Harry  and  Wilton  arrive.  Fifteen  minutes 
gone! 

"I  get  down  to  business. 

"Harry  says:  'Please  cut  it  short.' 

"I  could  have  saved  five  hundred  dollars 
if  I  had  had  time  to  present  our  side  of  the 
case  with  proper  deliberation.  But  Harry 
keeps  shouting: 

'"Do  cut  it  short.  I  must  get  there — 
don't  you  know?' 

2  5 


"CHARGE    IT" 

11  Wilton  must  have  his  pay,  too — he 
needs  every  cent  of  it  to-morrow. 

'"You  go  on.  I'll  stay  here  and  settle 
this  matter  and  go  home  by  the  trolley.' 

'"Let's  stick  together,'  my  young  friend 
entreats.  '  Please  hurry  it  through  and  come 
on  with  me.  I  need  you.' 

"Harry  must  have  company.  His  time 
is  wasted  unless  he  has  a  spectator — an 
audience — a  witness — a  historian.  With 
out  that,  all  his  hair-breadth  escapes  would 
be  thrown  away.  His  stories  would  hang 
by  a  thread. 

1  *  'We've  only  twenty-one  minutes, '  he  calls. 

"I  say  to  myself:  'Damn  the  man  whose 
money  is  like  water  and  whose  time  is 
more  precious  than  the  last  hour  of  Ma 
homet.'  Well,  of  course,  there  was  plenty 
of  money,  but  the  supply  of  time  was 
limited.  To  waste  a  second  was  to  lose 
an  opportunity  for  self-indulgence. 

"I   draw  a   check  and   take   a   hurried 
receipt  and  jump  in. 
6 


FROM   ONE   STAGE   TO   ANOTHER 

"Away  we  go.     'Look  out!' 

"The  brakes  grind,  and  we  rise  in  the  air 
a  little  as  a  small  boy  crosses  our  bows. 
We  just  missed  him — thank  God! 

"'Don't  be  reckless,  old  man — go  a  bit 
slower/ 

" '  It's  all  right.    We've  a  clear  road  now. ' 

"What  a  wind  in  our  faces!  There's 
the  track  ahead. 

'"Look  out!     The  train!    God  Almighty!1 

"I  spoke  too  late.  We  were  almost  up 
to  the  rails  when  I  saw  it.  We  couldn't 
stop.  Cleared  the  track  in  time.  Felt 
the  wind  of  the  engine  in  my  back  hair, 
and  then  my  scalp  moved.  Just  ahead  was 
a  light  buggy  in  the  middle  of  the  road 
and  a  bull,  frightened  by  the  cars,  gallop 
ing  beside  it. 

"In  the  excitement  Harry  hadn't  time  to 
blow,  and  the  roar  of  the  train  had  covered 
our  noise.  The  bull  turned  into  the  ditch 
and  speeded  up.  We  swerved  between  bull 
and  buggy  and  grazed  the  side  of  the  latter. 
7 


"CHARGE    IT" 

I  jumped  and  landed  on  the  bull,  and  that 
saved  me.  It's  the  first  time  that  I  ever 
knocked  a  bull  down.  He  got  to  his  feet 
swiftly  beside  me,  bellowed,  and  took  the 
fence.  He  was  a  fat,  well-fed  bull  with  a 
big,  round,  soft  side  on  him.  I  never  knew 
that  a  bull  was  so  mellow.  My  feet  sank 
deep,  and  he  gave  way,  and  I  hit  him  again 
with  another  part  of  my  person.  I  didn't 
mean  it,  and  felt  for  him,  although  it  is 
likely  that  his  feelings  needed  no  further 
help  from  me.  Of  course  I  bounded  off 
him  at  last  and  the  earth  hit  me  a  hard 
upper-cut,  but  the  bull  had  been  a  highly 
successful  shock  absorber.  In  a  second 
or  so  I  was  able  to  get  up  and  look  around. 
The  buggy  had  gone  over,  and  the  horse 
was  on  his  hind  legs  trying  to  climb  out  of 
the  dust-cloud. 

"Harry  stopped  his  car  and  began  to 
back  up. 

'"That'll  do  for  me/  I  said.     'I  don't 
sit  in  your  padded  cell  any  longer.' 
8 


FROM  ONE  STAGE  TO  ANOTHER 

"I  had  lived  a  whole  three-volume  novel 
in  the  last  forty  minutes.  The  Panama 
Canal  had  been  finished  and  England  had 
become  a  republic.  It  was  too  much. 

"We  found  two  men — one  at  the  head  of 
the  frightened  horse,  the  other  lying  beside 
the  wrecked  buggy  with  a  broken  leg. 

"And  Harry  had  an  engagement  to  play 
bridge ! 

"I  took  the  horse's  head.  The  well  man 
pulled  a  stake  off  the  fence  and  chased 
Harry  around  the  motor-car.  He  didn't 
intend  to  'charge  it.'  Wanted  cash  down, 
I  got  hold  of  his  arm  and  succeeded  in 
calming  him. 

"Harry  apologized  and  assured  them 
that  he  was  willing  to  pay  the  damage. 
We  picked  up  the  injured  man  and  took 
him  to  his  home.  On  the  way  Harry  ex 
plained  that  they  should  keep  track  of  all 
expenses  and: 

"'Charge  it.' 

"In  a  few  minutes  Harry  roared  off  in 
9 


"CHARGE    IT'1 

the  direction  of  Pointview  to  get  a  doctor 
and  the  6.03  express. 

'"It  might  be  a  little  late/  he  said,  as 
he  left  us. 

"The  next  day  Harry  was  arrested  as  a 
public  enemy  for  criminal  carelessness.  He 
had  injured  three  men  on  the  highways 
of  Connecticut,  to  say  nothing  of  dogs 
and  poultry.  Almost  everybody  had  some 
thing  charged  against  Harry.  He  was  highly 
unpopular,  but  a  good  fellow  at  heart. 

"I  got  the  judge  to  release  him  on  his 
promise  to  abandon  motoring  for  three  years. 

' '  Thus  he  rushed  out  of  the  motor-car  stage 
of  his  career  into  that  of  the  drag  and  tandem. 

"He  had  had  more  narrow  escapes  and 
suffered  greater  perils  than  Rob  Roy. 

"Yes,  bulls  are  a  good  thing — a  com 
paratively  soft  thing.  I  recommend  them 
to  every  motorist  who  may  have  to  look 
for  a  place  to  land.  Don't  ever  throw  your 
self  on  the  real  estate  of  New  England.  It 
can  hit  harder  than  you  can." 


II 


WHICH   BEGINS  THE  STORY  OF  THE  BISHOP  S 
HEAD 

"TTARRY  is  the  most  modern  character 
11  in  my  little  museum,"  said  the  Honor 
able  Socrates  Potter,  as  I  sat  with  him  in 
his  cozy  office.  "I  was  really  introduced 
to  Harry  by  the  Bishop  of  St.  Clare,  who 
died  in  1712.  I  didn't  know  his  heart 
until  the  Bishop  made  us  acquainted. 
Strange!  Well,  that  depends  on  the  point 
of  view.  You  see,  the  Bishop  was  acquired 
and  imported  as  an  ancestor  by  one  of  the 
best  families,  and  that's  how  I  happened 
to  meet  him.  They  would  have  got  Wil 
liam  the  Conqueror — of  England  and  Fifth 
Avenue — if  he  hadn't  been  well  hidden, 
ii 


"CHARGE    IT" 

"I  am  inclined  to  converse  long  and 
loudly  on  the  reconstruction  of  Pointview. 
Of  course  I  shall  talk  too  much,  but  I  am 
a  licensed  liar,  and  the  number  of  my 
machine  is  4227643720,  so  if  I  smash  a 
dog  here  and  there,  make  a  note  of  the  num 
ber  and  charge  it.  I'm  going  fast  and  shall 
not  have  time  to  stop  for  apologies. 

"In  Pointview  even  Time  has  quickened 
his  pace.  Last  year  is  ancient  history. 
Lizzie  has  been  succeeded  by  Miss  Eliza 
beth,  who  needs  a  maid,  a  chauffeur,  a 
footman,  and  a  house-party  to  maintain 
her  spirits.  Harry  and  his  drag  have 
taken  the  place  of  Dan  and  his  runabout. 

* '  The  enemy  has  arrived  in  force.  We  are 
surrounded  by  country-houses  and  city 
abdomens  of  appalling  size  and  arrogance. 
Mansions  crown  the  slopes  and  line  the 
water-front.  The  dialect  of  the  lazy  Yan 
kee  and  his  industrious  hens  are  heard 
no  more  in  the  hills  of  Pointview.  Where 
the  hoe  and  the  sickle  were  stirred  by  the 
12 


STORY  OF  THE  BISHOP'S  HEAD 

fear  of  hunger  the  golf-club  and  the  tennis- 
racket  are  moved  by  the  fear  of  fat.  The 
sweat  of  toil  is  now  the  perspiration  of 
exercise.  The  chatter  of  society  has  suc 
ceeded  that  of  the  goose  and  the  polliwog. 
Land  has  gone  up.  Rocks  have  become 
real  estate  even  while  they  belonged  to 
Christian  Scientists.  Ledges,  smitten  by  the 
modern  Moses,  have  gushed  a  stream  of 
gold.  Once  the  land  supported  its  owner. 
Now  wealth  supports  land  and  landlord 
and  the  fullness  thereof.  The  Fifth  Avenue 
farmer  has  begun  to  raise  his  own  vege 
tables  at  a  dollar  apiece  and  a  crop  of 
criminals  second  to  none.  In  his  hands 
fanning  becomes  wagriculture  and  the  farm 
a  swarming  nest  of  parasites. 

"We  are  in  the  midst  of  a  new  migration 
from  the  cities  back  to  the  land,  and  all  are 
happy  save  the  philosophers.  It  is  a  re 
mote  reaction  of  former  migrations  to  the 
mines  and  the  oil-fields.  The  descendants 
of  these  very  pioneers  now  seek  to  exchange 
13 


-CHARGE    IT' 

a  part  of  their  gold  for  the  ancient  sod  in 
which  are  the  roots  of  their  family  trees  and 
delusions* 

"With  these  rich  men  came  Henry 
Delance,  who  grew  up  with  me  here  and 
went  to  Pittsburg  in  his  early  twenties  and 
made  a  fortune  in  the  coal  and  iron  business. 
His  grandfather  was  old  Nick  Delance,  a 
blacksmith;  and  his  father  owned  a  farm 
on  the  hills  and  made  a  bare  living  for  him 
self  and  a  large  family.  They  had  been 
simple,  hard  working,  honest  people.  I 
helped  Henry  to  buy  the  old  place,  and,  as 
we  stood  together  on  the  hilltop,  he  said 
to  me: 

"'I  often  think  of  the  old  days  that  were 
full  of  hard  labor.  What  a  woman  my 
mother  was!  Did  all  the  work  of  the  house 
and  raised  seven  boys  and  two  girls,  and 
every  one  of  them  has  had  some  success 
in  the  world — except  me.  One  built  a  big 
railroad,  one  was  governor  of  a  State,  one 
a  member  of  Congress,  one  a  noted  phy- 
14 


STORY  OF  THE  BISHOP'S  HEAD 

sician,  two  have  made  millions,  and  both 
of  the  girls  married  well.  Now,  my  boy 
has  had  every  advantage — * 

1  ''But  poverty,'  I  suggested. 

"'But  poverty/  he  repeated,  'and  I'm 
unable  to  give  him  that.  It's  probably  the 
one  thing  that  would  make  a  man  of  him, 
and  I  wouldn't  wonder  if  he  succeeded  in 
achieving  it.' 

"'A  rather  large  undertaking,'  I  said. 
''Yes,   but  he's  well  qualified,'   Henry 
answered,  with  a  smile. 

"'What's  the  matter  with  your  boy?' 
I  asked. 

'"So  busy  with  tomfoolery — no  time  for 
anything  else.  I've  had  so  much  to  do 
that  I've  rather  neglected  Harry,  and  now 
he's  too  much  for  me.  He  knows  that  he's 
got  me  beat  on  education,  but  that's  only 
the  beginning  of  what  he  knows.  Good 
fellow,  you  understand,  but  he's  young  and 
thinks  me  old-fashioned.  I  wish  you'd 
help  me  to  make  a  man  of  him.' 
15 


"CHARGE    IT 

"'What  can  I  do?* 

'"Get  him  interested  in  some  kind  of 
work.  He  doesn't  like  my  business.  He 
hates  Wall  Street,  and,  knowing  it  as  I  do, 
how  can  I  blame  the  boy?  He  doesn't 
take  to  the  law — ' 

'"And,  knowing  it  as  I  do,  how  can  7 
blame  him?'  I  interrupted. 

"'But,  somehow,  he  hasn't  the  spring  in 
his  bow  that  I  had — the  get-up-and-get — 
the  disposition  to  move  all  hell  if  necessary.' 

'"You  can't  expect  it,'  I  said.  'His 
mainspring  is  broken/ 

'"What  would  you  call  his  mainspring?' 
he  asked. 

"  'The  desire  to  win  money  and  its  power. 
Mind  you,  I  wouldn't  call  that  a  high 
motive,  but  in  a  young  man  it's  a  kind  of  a 
mainspring  that  sets  him  a-going  and  keeps 
the  works  busy  until  he  can  get  better  motive 
power.  In  Harry  it's  broken.' 

'"You're  right — it  was  busted  long  ago,' 
said  Henry  Delance. 

16 


STORY  OF  THE  BISHOP'S  HEAD 

"'Some  one  has  got  to  contrive  a  new 
mainspring  for  the  sons  of  millionaires — 
they're  so  plenty  these  days.' 

"'There's  the  desire  to  be  respectable,' 
he  suggested. 

"'But  it  is  not  nearly  so  universal  as 
the  love  of  money.  If  it  were  possible  to 
have  millionaire  carpenters  and  shoemakers 
there'd  be  more  hope!  But  I'll  try  to 
invent  a  mainspring  for  Harry.  If  he  doesn't 
marry  some  fool  woman  there's  a  chance 
for  the  boy — a  good  chance.  Tell  me  all 
about  him.' 

"In  his  own  way,  which  amused  me  a 
little,  the  old  man  sketched  the  character 
of  his  son,  or  rather  confessed  it. 

'"A  kind  of  Alexander  the  Great,'  he 
said.  'We  shall  have  to  be  careful  or  lose 
our  heads.  Surfeited  with  power,  you  know. 
When  he  wants  anything  he  goes  to  a  store 
and  says, ' '  Charge  it . "  That  has  ruined  him. 
He's  no  scale  of  values  in  his  mind.' 

"He  told  me,  then,  with  some  evidence 
17 


"CHARGE    IT' 

of  alarm,  that  Harry  had  become  interested 
in  a  fool  woman,  older  than  he,  noted  for 
her  beauty  and  equestrian  skill — by  name 
Mrs.  Revere-Chalmers,  of  a  well-known 
Southern  family.  I  knew  the  woman — 
divorced  from  a  rich  old  gentleman  of  great 
generosity,  who  had  taken  all  the  blame 
for  her  sake.  But  I  happened  to  know 
that  the  circumstances  on  her  side  were 
not  creditable.  The  truth,  however,  had 
been  well  concealed. 

"In  her  youth  Frances  Revere  had  two 
beautiful  parents.  In  fact,  they  were  all 
that  any  girl  could  desire — obedient  and 
respectful  to  their  youngers.  She  was  al 
ways  kind  to  them  and  kept  them  looking 
neatly  and  helped  them  in  their  lessons 
and  brought  them  up  in  the  fear  of  Tiffany 
and  the  hope  of  future  happiness.  They 
played  most  of  the  time,  but  never  chased 
each  other  in  and  out  of  the  bedrooms  or 
made  any  noise  about  the  house  when  she 
lay  sleeping  in  the  forenoon.  Their  sense 
18 


STORY  OF  THE  BISHOP'S  HEAD 

of  chivalry  would  not  have  permitted  it. 
When  she  arose  she  called  them  to  her  and 
patted  their  heads  and  said:  'What  dear 
parents  I  have !'  It  might  be  thought  that 
the  fair  Frances  led  an  aimless  and  idle 
life.  Not  so.  The  young  lady  was  very 
busy  and  never  forgot  her  aim.  She  was 
preparing  herself  to  be  a  marryer  of  men 
and  the  leading  marryer  in  the  proud  cit3r 
of  her  birth.  Every  member  of  the  house 
hold  became  her  assistant  in  this  noble 
industry.  Many  storekeepers  had  uncon 
sciously  joined  her  staff  and  '  charged  it ' 
until  they  were  weary.  All  her  papa's 
money  had  been  invested  in  the  business, 
and  he  began  to  borrow  for  a  rainy  day. 
Then  there  came  a  long  spell  of  wet  weather. 
At  last  something  had  to  be  done.  Frances 
began  to  use  her  talents.  No  prince  or 
noble  duke  had  come  for  her,  so  she  married 
an  old  man  worth  ten  million  dollars  and 
sent  her  parents  to  an  orphan  asylum  with 
a  fair  allowance  of  spending-money.  They 
19 


"CHARGE    IT" 

are  her  only  heirs,  and  now,  at  thirty,  but 
with  ample  capital,  she  has  set  up  again 
in  the  marrying  business. 

"She  lives  in  a  big  country-house,  and  has 
a  lot  of  cats  and  dogs  that  are  shampooed 
every  day.  Her  life  is  pretty  much  de 
voted  to  the  regulation  of  hair.  Her  own 
requires  the  exclusive  attention  of  a  hired 
girl.  Its  tint,  luster,  and  general  effect 
show  excellent  taste  and  close  applica 
tion.  Considering  its  area,  her  scalp  is 
the  most  remarkable  field  of  industry  in 
Connecticut.  Has  herself  made  into  a  kind 
of  life-sized  portrait  every  day  and  care 
fully  framed  and  lighted  and  hung.  It 
is  a  beautiful  portrait,  but  it  is  not  a 
portrait  of  her. 

"Her  life  is  arduous.  I  have  some 
reason  to  think  that  it  wearies  her.  She 
rings  for  the  masseuse  at  10.30  A.M.  and 
breakfasts  in  bed  at  twelve  o'clock.  Soon 
after  that  the  chiropodist  and  the  manicure 
and  the  hair-dresser  begin  to  saw  wood; 
20 


STORY    OF   THE    BISHOP'S    HEAD 

then  the  grooms  and  second  footmen.  At 
two  o'clock  she  goes  out  to  pat  the  head  of 
the  ten-thousand-dollar  bull  and  give  some 
sugar  to  the  horses,  all  of  whom  have  been 
prepared  for  this  ordeal  by  bathing  and 
massage. 

"It's  great  to  be  able  to  pat  the  head  of  a 
ten-thousand-dollar  bull.  It's  a  pretty  van 
ity.  All  the  Fifth  Avenue  farmers  indulge 
in  it.  Some  slap  them  on  the  back  and  some 
poke  them  in  the  ribs  with  the  point  of  a 
parasol,  but  the  correct  thing  is  to  pat 
them  on  the  head  and  say :  Dear  old  Romeo ! 

"After  a  turn  in  the  saddle  Mrs.  Revere- 
Chalmers  led  society  until  midnight.  With 
her  a  new  spirit  had  arrived  in  the  ancient 
stronghold  of  the  Yankee. 

"I  began  to  learn  things  about  Harry — a 
big,  blond,  handsome  youth  who  had  trav 
eled  much.  He  had  been  to  school  in  New 
York,  London,  Florence,  and  Paris,  and  had 
graduated  from  Harvard.  For  a  time  he 
called  it  Hahvud,  but  passed  that  trouble 

3  21 


"CHARGE    IT 

without  serious  injury  and  put  it  behind  him. 
In  the  European  stage  of  his  career  he  had 
been  attacked  by  lions,  griffins,  and  battle- 
axes  and  had  lost  some  of  his  red  blood. 
There  he  had  acquired  a  full  line  of  Fifth 
Avenue  dialect  and  conversation  with  trills 
and  grace  notes  from  France  and  Italy. 
He  had  been  slowly  recovering  from  that 
trouble  for  a  year  or  so  when  I  met  him. 
Now  and  then  a  good,  strong,  native  idiom 
burst  out  in  his  conversation. 

4 'Harry  was  a  man  without  a  country, 
having  never  had  a  fair  chance  to  acquire 
one.  He  had  touched  many  high  and  low 
places — from  the  top  of  the  Eiffel  Tower 
to  the  lowest  depths  of  the  underworld. 
Also,  he  knew  the  best  hotels  in  Europe  and 
eastern  America,  and  the  Duke  of  Suther 
land  and  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  and 
Jack  Johnson,  the  pugilist.  Harry  knew 
only  the  upper  and  lower  ends  of  life. 

"  He  was  an  extremist.  Also,  he  was  a 
prolific  and  generous  liar.  He  lied  not  to 

22 


STORY  OF  THE  BISHOP'S  HEAD 

deceive,  but  to  entertain.  There  was  a 
kind  of  noble  charity  in  his  lying.  He 
would  gladly  perjure  his  soul  to  speed  an 
hour  for  any  good  friend.  His  was  the 
fictional  imagination  largely  exercised  in  the 
cause  of  human  happiness.  Now  and  then 
he  became  the  hero  of  his  own  lies,  but  he 
was  generally  willing  to  divide  the  honors. 
His  friends  knew  not  when  to  believe  him, 
and  he  often  deceived  them  when  he  was 
telling  the  truth. 

"Early  in  April,  Henry  Delance  came  to 
me  and  said:  'Soc,  you've  been  working 
hard  for  years,  and  you  need  a  rest.  Let's 
get  aboard  the  next  steamer  and  spend  a 
fortnight  in  England.' 

"I  had  little  taste  for  foreign  travel,  but 
Betsey  urged  me  to  go,  and  I  went  with 
Henry  and  his  wife,  their  daughter  Ruth 
and  the  boy  Harry,  and  sundry  maids  and 
valets.  We  had  been  a  week  in  Lon 
don,  when  Henry  and  the  Mrs.  came  into 
my  room  one  day,  aglow  with  excite- 
23 


"CHARGE    IT" 

ment.  Mrs.  Delance  was  first  to  address 
me. 

"'Mr.  Potter,  congratulate  us,'  said  she. 
'We  find  that  Henry  is  a  lineal  descendant 
of  William  the  Conqueror.' 

"'Henry  it  is  possible  that  William 
could  prove  an  alibi,  or  maybe  you  could,' 
I  suggested. 

'"I'd  make  an  effort,'  said  he,  with  a 
trace  of  embarrassment,  'but  my  wife 
thinks  that  we  had  better  plead  guil 
ty  and  let  it  go.  That  kind  of  thing 
doesn't  interest  me  so  much  as  it  does  her.' 

"'After  all,'  I  answered,  by  way  of  con 
solation,  'if  you  think  it's  like  to  do  you 
any  harm,  it  doesn't  need  to  get  out.  I  shall 
respect  your  confidence.' 

'"Too  late!'  his  wife  exclaimed.  'The 
facts  have  been  cabled  to  America.' 

"I  was  writing  letters  in  my  room,  next 

day,   when  Harry  interrupted  me  with  a 

hurried    entrance.     He    locked    the    door 

inside,    and   in  a  kind  of  playful  silence 

24 


STORY    OF  THE    BISHOP'S    HEAD 

drew  from  under   his   rain-coat,   and   de 
posited  on  my  table,  a  human  skull. 

'"The  Bishop  of  St.  Clare,'  he  whispered, 
in  that  curious  dialect  which  I  shall  not 
try  to  imitate. 

'"He  isn't  looking  very  well,'  I  said,  not 
knowing  what  he  meant. 

'"This  is  the  Bishop's  head — the  Bishop 
of  St.  Clare,'  Harry  whispered  again.  'He 
was  one  of  our  ancestors — by  Jove !' 

"'Is  that  all  that  was  the  matter  with 
him?'  I  asked. 

"'No;  his  epitaph  says  that  he  died  of  a 
fever  in  1712.' 

"'How  did  you  get  hold  of  his  head?' 
I  asked.  'Win  it  in  a  raffle?' 

'"I  bribed  the  old  verger  in  the  crypt 
of  St.  Mary's.  Offered  him  two  sovereigns 
to  lift  the  stone  lid  and  let  me  look  in.  He 
said  he  couldn't  do  that,  but  discreetly 
withdrew  when  I  put  the  money  in  his  hand. 
It  was  up  to  me,  don't  you  know,  and  here 
is  the  Bishop's  head.' 
25 


"CHARGE    IT' 

"'Going  to  have  him  photographed  in  a 
group  of  the  family?'  I  asked. 

'"No,  but  you  see  Materna  paid  two 
pounds  for  a  chunk  off  a  tombstone,  and  I 
thought  I  would  give  her  a  souvenir  worth 
having,*  said  he,  and  blushed  for  the  first 
time  since  our  interview  had  begun.  'This 
is  unique.1 

"'And  you  didn't  think  the  Bishop 
would  miss  it?'  I  suggested. 

"Not  seriously,'  he  answered.  'I  guess 
it's  a  fool  thing  to  have  done,  but  I  thought 
that  I  could  have  some  fun  with  the  Bish 
op's  head.  Mother  is  going  to  round  up 
all  the  Delances  at  Christmas  for  a  big 
dinner — uncles,  aunts,  and  cousins,  you 
know — a  celebration  of  our  genealogical 
discoveries  with  a  great  family  tree  in  the 
center  of  the  table.  The  history  of  the 
Delances  will  be  read,  and  I  thought  that 
I  would  spring  a  surprise — tell  them  that  I 
had  invited  our  old  ancestor,  Sir  Robert 
Delance,  Bishop  of  St.  Clare;  that,  con- 
26 


STORY  OF  THE  BISHOP'S  HEAD 

trary  to  my  hope,  he  had  accepted,  and  that 
I  would  presently  introduce  him.  In  due 
time  I  would  produce  the  head  and  read 
from  his  life  and  writings,  which  I  bought 
in  a  London  book-stall.  Finally,  I  thought 
that  I  would  have  him  tell  how  he  happened 
to  be  present.  Don't  you  think  he  would 
make  a  hit?' 

"'He  would  surely  make  a  hit — a  re 
sounding  hit,'  I  said,  'but  not  as  a  proof  of 
respectability.  Even  if  the  Bishop  is  your 
ancestor,  you  have  no  good  title  to  his  bones. 
I  presume  that  every  visitor  to  the  old  church 
puts  his  name  and  address  in  a  register?' 

'"Yes/ 

" '  Well,  suppose  the  theft  is  discovered  and 
the  verger  gives  you  away.  All  the  money 
you've  got  wouldn't  keep  you  out  of  prison.' 

"Harry  began  to  turn  pale.  He  was  a 
good  fellow,  but  this  genealogical  frenzy 
had  turned  his  head,  and  his  head  was 
not  as  old  as  the  Bishop's.  It  was  unduly 
young. 

27 


"CHARGE    IT" 

"'Assume  that  you  get  home  with  your 
prize,  the  Bishop's  head  would  be  the  worst 
enemy  that  his  descendants  ever  had.  It 
would  always  accuse  you  and  grin  at  your 
follies.  And  would  you  dare  proclaim  the 
truth  over  in  Pointview  that  you  really 
have  the  skull  of  the  Bishop  of  St.  Clare?' 

"The  boy  was  scared.  He  had  suddenly 
discovered  an  important  fact.  It  was  the 
north  pole  of  his  education. 

"'By  Jove!  I'm  an  ass,'  he  said.  'What 
shall  I  do  with  it?' 

"'Say  nothing  of  the  thing  to  anybody, 
not  even  to  your  father,  and  get  rid  of  it.' 

'"That's  what  I'll  do,'  he  said,  as  he 
wrapped  the  skull  in  a  piece  of  newspaper, 
hid  it  tinder  his  coat,  and  left  me. 

"We  sailed  next  afternoon,  and  that 
evening,  when  Harry  and  I  sat  alone  in  a 
corner  of  the  deck,  I  asked  him  what 
he  had  done  with  the  Bishop's  head. 

'"Tried  to  get  rid  of  it,  but  couldn't,' 
he  said.  'My  conscience  smote  me,  and  I 
28 


STORY  OF  THE  BISHOP'S  HEAD 

took  the  old  bone  back  to  St.  Mary'$. 
Going  to  do  my  duty  like  a  man,  you  see, 
but  it  wouldn't  work.  New  verger  on  the 
job!  I  weakened.  Then  I  put  it  in  a  box 
and  had  it  addressed  to  a  fictitious  man  in 
Bristol,  and  sent  my  valet  to  get  it  off  by 
express.  It  went  on,  and  was  returned  for  a 
better  address.  You  see,  my  valet — officious 
ass! — had  left  his  address  at  the  express 
office.  How  gauche  of  him!  While  we 
were  lying  at  the  dock  a  messenger  came  to 
my  state-room  with  the  Bishop's  head.  I 
had  to  take  it  and  pay  five  shillings  and  a 
sixpence  for  the  privilege.' 

"'The  old  Bishop  seems  to  be  quite  at 
tached  to  his  new  relative,'  I  said. 

"'Yes,  but  when  the  deck  is  deserted,  by 
and  by,  I'm  going  to  drop  him  overboard.' 

"And  that  is  what  he  did — dropped  it, 
solemnly,  from  the  ship's  side  at  dinner 
time,  and  I  witnessed  the  proceeding. 

"The  adventure  had  one  result  that  was 
rather  curious  and  unexpected.  It  brought 
29 


"CHARGE    IT" 

Harry  close  to  me  and  established  our  re 
lations  to  each  other.  That  they  admitted 
me  to  his  confidence  as  a  friend  and  coun 
selor  of  the  utmost  frankness  was  on  the 
whole  exceedingly  fortunate.  From  that 
time  he  began  to  trust  me  and  to  distrust 
himself. 

"So  it  happened  that  I  was  really  intro 
duced  to  Harry  by  the  Bishop  of  St.  Clare, 
who  died  in  1712,  and  those  credentials 
gave  me  a  standing  which  I  could  not  other 
wise  have  enjoyed. 

"Coming  home,  I  limbered  up  my  imag 
ination  and  outlied  Harry. 

"I  was  forced  to  invent  that  cheerful, 
handy  liar  the  late  Dr.  Godfrey  Vogeldam 
Guph,  Professor  of  the  Romance  Languages 
in  the  University  of  Brague  and  the  intimate 
friend  of  any  great  man  you  may  be  pleased 
to  mention.  With  his  help  I  have  laid 
low  even  the  most  authoritative,  learned, 
and  precise  liars  in  the  State  of  Connecticut. 
I  do  it  by  quoting  from  his  memoirs. 
30 


STORY  OF  THE  BISHOP'S  HEAD 

"Harry's  specialty  were  lies  of  adventure 
in  court  and  palace,  and,  as  Dr.  Guph  had 
known  all  the  crowned  heads,  he  became 
an  ever-present  help  in  time  of  trouble. 

"Every  lie  of  Harry's  I  outdid  with 
another  of  ampler  proportions.  He  put 
on  a  little  more  steam,  but  I  kept  abreast 
or  a  length  ahead  of  him.  By  and  by  he 
broke  down  and  begged  for  quarter. 

'"On  my  word  as  a  gentleman,'  said  he, 
'that  last  story  I  told  was  true.  It  really 
happened,  don't  you  know?' 

'"Well,  Harry,  if  you  will  only  notify  me 
when  you  propose  to  tell  the  truth,  I  shall  be 
glad  to  take  your  word  for  it, '  was  my  answer. 

"'And  keep  Dr.  Guph  chained,'  said  he. 

"'Exactly,  and  give  you  like  warning 
when  I  have  a  lie  ready  to  launch.' 

"'That's  a  fair  treaty,'  he  agreed. 

"'And  a  good  idea,'  I  said.     'As  a  liar 

of  long  experience  I  have  found  it  best  to 

notify  all  comers  what  to  expect  of  me  when 

I  see  a  useful  lie  in  the  offing.     That  has 

31 


"CHARGE    IT 

enabled  me  to  give  my  fancy  full  play 
without  impairing  my  reputation.  My 
noblest  faculties  have  had  ample  exercise 
while  my  word  has  remained  at  par.' 

"We  made  an  agreement  along  that  line, 
and  Harry  ceased  to  be  a  liar,  and  became  a 
story-teller  of  much  humor  and  ingenuity." 


Ill 


WHICH     IS     THE     STORY     OF     THE     PIMPLED 
QUEEN   AND   THE    BLACK    SPOT 

"  "\  X  TELL,  on  our  return,  Mrs.  Delance  had 
V  V  a  helmet  and  a  battle-ax,  with  sundry 
accessories,  emblazoned  on  her  letter-heads 
and  the  doors  of  her  limousine.  Here  was 
another  case  of  charge  it,  but  this  time  it 
was  charged  against  her  slender  capital 
of  good  sense.  Mrs.  Delance  was  a  stout 
lady  of  the  Dreadnought  type.  Harry  set 
tled  down  in  the  home  of  his  father  and 
began  to  study  the  'middle  clahsses'  with 
a  drag  and  tandem  and  garments  for  every 
kind  of  leisure.  The  girls  went  to  ride  with 
him,  and  naturally  began  to  smarten  their 
dress  and  accents  and  to  change  their  es 
timates.  His  'aristocratic '  friends  and  man- 
33 


-CHARGE    IT' 

ners  were  much  in  their  company  and  ever 
in  their  dreams. 

'  *  Of  course,  all  that  began  to  react  on  the 
young  men:  if  that  was  the  kind  of  thing 
the  girls  liked,  they  must  try  to  be  in  it. 
Slowly  but  surely  a  Pointview  aristocracy 
began  its  line  of  cleavage  and  a  process  of 
integration.  Crests  appeared  on  the  letter 
heads  and  limousine  doors  of  the  newly 
rich.  In  a  month  or  so  people  of  brain 
and  substance  degenerated  into  a  condition 
of  hardened  shameless  idiocy. 

"Some  of  our  best  citizens  went  abroad, 
each  to  find  his  place  among  the  descend 
ants  of  William  the  Conqueror.  Suddenly  I 
discovered  that  the  clerk  in  my  office  was 
ashamed  to  be  seen  on  the  street  with  a 
package  in  his  hands. 

"Our  young  men  began  to  long  for  wealth 
and  leisure.  They  grew  impatient  of  the 
old  process  of  thrift  and  industry.  It  was 
too  slow.  Many  of  them  opened  accounts 
in  Wall  Street. 

34 


THE    PIMPLE   AND    BLACK    SPOT 

"  Young  Roger  Daniels  had  some  luck 
there  and  began  to  advertise  the  fact  with  a 
small  steam-yacht  and  a  cruise.  We  were 
going  as  hard  as  ever  to  keep  up,  but  on 
higher  levels  of  aspiration.  The  girls  were 
engaged  in  a  strenuous  contest  for  the  prize 
of  Harry's  favor,  with  that  handsome  young 
divorcee  well  in  the  lead. 

"Roger  and  his  party  were  about  to  re 
turn  from  their  cruise,  and  Harry  was  to 
give  them  a  ball  at  the  Yacht  Club. 

"The  day  before  the  ball  our  best-known 
physician  came  to  see  Mrs.  Potter,  who  was 
ill,  and  cheered  us  up  with  a  story.  The 
Doctor  was  young,  attractive,  and  able. 
He  had  threatened  every  appendix  in  Point- 
view,  and  had  a  lot  of  inside  information 
about  our  men  and  women — especially  the 
latter.  He  looked  weary. 

"'Yesterday  was  a  little  hard  on  me,' 

he  said.     'It  began  at  four  in  the  morning 

with  a  confinement  case  and  ended  at  one 

A.M.     There   were   two   operations   at   the 

35 


-CHARGE    IT' 

hospital,  a  steady  stream  at  the  office,  and  a 
twenty-mile  ride  over  the  hills.  Got  back 
in  the  evening  pretty  well  worn  out. 
Tumbled  into  bed  at  two  minutes  of  eleven, 
and  was  asleep  before  the  clock  struck. 
The  'phone-bell  at  my  bedside  awoke  me. 
I  let  it  go  on  for  a  minute.  Hadn't  energy 
enough  to  get  up.  It  rang  and  rang. 
Out  I  tumbled. 

11  'Hello!'  I  said. 

:l  'A  voice  answered.  "I  am  Mrs.  So-and- 
So's  butler,"  it  said.  "She  wishes  to  see 
you  as  soon  as  you  can  get  here.  It's  very 
urgent," 

"'"What's  the  matter?" 

""Don't  know,  sir,  but  it  is  serious." 

""'All  right,"  I  said. 

"My  chauffeur  was  off  for  the  night,  so 
I  'phoned  to  the  stable  and  got  Patrick 
and  told  him  to  hitch  up  the  black  mare 
at  once,  dressed,  and  took  everything  that 
I  was  likely  to  need  in  an  emergency,  got 
into  the  wagon,  and  hurried  away  in  the 
36 


THE    PIMPLE   AND    BLACK    SPOT 

darkness.  After  all,  I  thought,  it  is  some 
thing  to  have  one's  skill  so  much  in  request 
by  the  rich  and  the  powerful.  It  was  a 
long  ride  with  one  horse-power,  but  we  got 
there. 

"  'Many  windows  of  the  great  house  were 
aglow.  The  first  butler  met  me  in  the  hall 
and  took  me  to  my  lady's  chamber — an 
immense  room  finished  in  the  style  of  the 
First  Empire.  She  was  half  reclining  and 
playing  solitaire  as  she  smoked  a  cigarette 
on  a  divan  that  occupied  a  dais  overhung 
with  rare  tapestries  on  a  side  of  the  room. 
The  effect  of  the  whole  thing  was  queenly — 
&  la  R6camier.  She  greeted  me  wearily 
and  without  rising. 

"'"Sit  down,"  said  she,  and  I  did  so. 

"She  turned  to  a  good-looking  maid 
who  timidly  stood  near  the  divan. 

'  "My  dear  little  woman,  you  weary  me — 
please  go,"  she  said. 

"'The  maid  went. 

'""Dawctah,"  the  lady  said  to  me,  "I 

4  37 


"CHARGE    IT" 

have  a  nahsty  little  pimple  on  my  right 
cheek,  and  I  really  cahn't  go  to  the  ball, 
you  know,  unless  it  is  cuahed.  Won't  you 
kindly — ah — see  what  can  be  done?" 

" ' "  A  pimple !  God  prosper  it !"  I  said  to 
myself.  "Has  the  great  M.D.  become  a 
P.D. — a  mere  doctor  of  pimples?" 

'"I  inspected  the  pimple — a  very  slight 
affair. 

""Why,  if  I  were  you,  I'd  just  cover  the 
pimple  with  a  little  square  of  court  plaster," 
I  said.  "It  would  become  you." 

"'"What  a  pretty  idea!  That's  just 
what  I  will  do,"  she  exclaimed. 

"'"Please  charge  it,  Dawctah,"  she  said, 
wearily,  as  she  resumed  her  solitaire. 

"I  charged  a  hundred  dollars,  but 
nothing  could  pay  me  for  the  humiliation 
I  suffered.  Going  home,  I  pounded  the  mare 
shamefully/ 

"'You  charged  a  good  price/  I  said. 

"'Yes;  but  it's  like  pulling  teeth  to  get 
any  money  out  of  her.  One  has  to  earn  it 

38 


THE    PIMPLE   AND    BLACK    SPOT 

twice.     Worth  a  million,  and  hangs  every 
body  up.     Some  have  to  sue.' 

"'Does  nothing  to-day  that  can  be  done 
to-morrow/  I  said. 

"'True/  said  he;  'she  don't  look  after 
her  business,  and  thinks  that  every  one  is 
trying  to  cheat  her.' 

"'Same  old  story,'  was  my  remark.  'I 
was  her  husband's  lawyer.  "Well,  dear, 
how  much  do  you  suppose  McCrory's  bill 
is  for  the  last  month?"  he  would  ask  her. 
She  would  look  thoughtful  and  say:  "Oh, 
about  fifteen  hundred  dollars. "  "  My  dear, 
he  would  go  on,  "it  is  ten  thousand  six 
hundred  and  forty-three  dollars  and  twenty- 
four  cents."  "Oh,  that's  impossible,"  she 
would  answer.  "There's  some  mistake 
about  it.  I'll  never  O.K.  such  a  bill. 
It's  an  outrage!"  But  the  bill  was  always 
right.' 

"I  didn't  suppose  you  would  know  the 
lady — I  haven't  mentioned  her  name,' 
said  the  Doctor. 

39 


-CHARGE    IT" 

"'I  know  her,  but  don't  worry — I  shall 
not  betray  your  confidence.  I  knew  her 
husband.  It  wore  him  out  looking  after 
the  charge-it  department.  Now  she's  try 
ing  to  get  Harry  Delance  for  his  job.' 

"'She's  badly  in  need  of  a  clerk,'  said  the 
Doctor,  'and  I  hope  she  gets  one.  He  could 
look  after  the  pimples  as  well  as  I  can.' 

"Many  were  getting  ready  for  the  ball, 
but  this  lady  was  the  only  one  I  knew  of 
who  had  spent  a  hundred  dollars  for  facial 
improvement.  Harry,  however,  was  about 
to  spend  a  thousand  dollars  for  the  im 
provement  of  his  conscience.  It  was  one 
of  the  necessary  expenses  and  it  came  about 
in  this  way: 

"The  day  of  the  ball  had  arrived.  Harry 
came  to  see  me  about  noon.  He  said  that 
he  had  been  busy  all  the  morning  with 
preparations  for  the  ball,  but — 

"He  showed  me  a  telegram.  It  was  from 
Roger  Daniels,  and  it  said: 

'"The  recent  slump  in  the  market  has  put 
40 


THE    PIMPLE   AND    BLACK    SPOT 

me  in  hell's  hole.  Please  wire  one  thousand 
dollars  to  Bridgeport,  where  I  am  hung  up. 
If  you  do,  I  shall  give  you  good  collateral 
and  eternal  gratitude.  If  you  don't,  we 
shall  have  to  miss  the  ball.  Please  remem 
ber  that  I  am  waiting  at  the  other  end  of 
the  wire  like  a  hungry  cat  at  a  mouse-hole.' 

"Harry  looked  worried.  The  ball  must 
come  off,  and,  without  Roger,  it  would  be 
like  Hamlet  minus  the  melancholy  Dane. 
It  was  a  special  compliment  to  Roger. 

' ' '  What  do  you  advise  me  to  do  ?' Jae  asked. 

"'Pay  it.7 

'"It  will  probably  be  a  dead  loss.' 

"'Probably,  but  it's  plainly  up  to  you. 
He's  got  in  trouble  keeping  your  pace.  To 
tell  the  honest  truth,  you're  responsible  for 
it,  and  the  public  will  charge  it  to  your 
account.  You  must  pay  the  bill  or  suffer 
moral  bankruptcy.' 

"Harry  was  taken  by  surprise. 
"But  I  can  pay  for  my  folly/  he  said. 

' ' '  Yes ;  but  when  it  becomes  another  man's 


"CHARGE    IT" 

folly  it's  stolen  property,  and  as  much 
yours  as  ever.  The  goods  have  your 
mark  on  'em,  and,  by  and  by,  they're  dumped 
at  your  door.  They  may  be  damaged  by 
dirt  and  vermin,  but  you  've  got  to  take  'em. 
"l After  all,  Harry,  why  should  a  young 
man  whose  education  has  cost  a  hundred 
thousand  dollars,  if  a  cent,  be  giving  up  his 
life  to  folly?  You're  too  smart  to  spend  the 
most  of  your  time  looking  beautiful — try 
ing  to  excite  the  admiration  of  women  and 
the  envy  of  men.  That  might  do  in  some 
of  the' old  countries  where  the  people  are  as 
dumb  as  cattle  and  are  capable  only  of  the 
emotion  of  awe  and  need  professional 
gentlemen  to  excite  it,  and  to  feed  upon  their 
substance.  Here  the  people  have  their 
moments  of  weakness,  but  mostly  they  are 
pretty  level-headed.  They  judge  men  by 
what  they  do,  not  by  what  they  look  like. 
The  professional  gentleman  is  first  an  ob 
ject  of  curiosity  and  then  an  object  of  scorn. 
He's  not  for  us.  Young  man,  I  knew  your 
42 


THE    PIMPLE    AND    BLACK    SPOT 

father  and  your  grandfather.  I  like  you 
and  want  you  to  know  that  I  am  speaking 
kindly,  but  you  ought  to  go  to  work.' 

'"Mr.  Potter,  he  said,  'upon  my  word, 
sir,  I'm  going  to  work  one  of  these  days — 
at  something — I  don't  know  what.' 

'"The  sooner  the  better,'  I  said.  'Work 
is  the  thing  that  makes  men — nothing  else. 
In  Pointview  everybody  used  to  work. 
Now  here  are  some  facts  for  your  genealogy 
that  you  haven't  discovered.  Your  grand 
father  and  grandmother  raised  a  family 
of  nine  children  and  never  had  a  servant — 
think  of  that.  Your  grandmother  made 
clothes  for  the  family  and  did  all  the  work 
of  the  house.  She  was  a  doctor,  a  nurse, 
a  teacher,  a  spinner,  a  weaver,  a  knitter,  a 
sewer,  a  cook,  a  washerwoman,  a  gentle 
and  tender  mother.  Now  we  are  beginning 
to  rot  with  idleness. 

'"Let  me  tell  you  a  story  of  a  modern 
lady  of  Pointview.' 

"  Then  I  told  him  of  the  Doctor's  call 
43 


"CHARGE    IT" 

on  the  pimpled  queen  at  midnight,  and 
added : 

'"Think  of  that!  Think  of  the  fathom 
less  depths  of  vanity  and  selfishness  that 
lie  under  that  pimple.  It's  a  monument 
more  sublime  than  the  Matterhorn.  Think 
of  the  poor  fellow  that  has  to  marry  that 
human  millstone,  and  be  the  clerk  of  her 
charge-it  department.' 

'"I  can  think  of  no  worse  luck,  really,' 
said  he  'I  wonder  who  it  is!' 

'"Doctors  never  give  names,'  I  said. 
'But  you  might  look  for  the  little  black 
square  of  court-plaster.' 

"'By  Jove!'  he  exclaimed.  'I  shall  look 
with  interest.' 

"The  ball  came  off,  and  Roger  got  there, 
and  so  did  the  lady  and  the  square  of  black 
court-plaster;  and  that  night  Harry  began 
a  new  stage  in  his  career. 

"After  all,  Harry  was  no  dunce,  but  he 
was  not  yet  convinced." 


IV 


IN     WHICH     SOCRATES     ENCOUNTERS         NEW 

THOUGHT"   AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  HAIR 

"  \A/HEN  people  have  Httle  to  do  they  go 
V  V  back  to  childishness.     They  long  for 

novelty — new  playthings,  new  adventures, 
new  sensations,  new  friends.  So  our  up 
per  classes  are  utterly  restless.  Every  old 
pleasure  is  a  slough  of  despond.  The 
ladies  have  tried  jewels,  laces,  crests,  titled 
husbands,  divorces,  gambling,  cocktails, 
cigarettes,  and  other  branches  of  exhilara 
tion.  They  have  passed  through  the  slums 
of  literature  and  of  the  East  Side  of  Gotham. 
The  gentlemen  have  shown  them  the  way 
and  smiled  with  amusement  and  gone  on 
to  greater  triumphs.  To  these  people 
45 


"CHARGE    IT" 

every  old  idea  is  'bromide.'  It  bores  them. 
They  scoff  at  men  'who  take  themselves 
seriously.'  In  a  word,  Moses  and  the 
Prophets  are  so  much  'dope.'  And  they 
are  excellent  people  who  really  want  to 
make  the  world  better,  but  the  childish 
craze  for  novelty  is  upon  them.  Mrs. 
Revere-Chalmers  was  one  of  this  kind. 
Harry  came  to  me  next  day  at  my  house 
and  said: 

'"By  Jove!  you  know,  it  was  my  friend 
Mrs.  R.-C.  who  wore  the  black  square. 
But  she  is  really  a  charming  woman — not  at 
all  a  bad  sort.  I  want  you  to  know  her 
better.  She  made  me  promise  to  bring 
you  over  to-morrow  afternoon  if  you  would 
come.' 

''We  went.  It  was  a  'new-thought' 
tea — a  deep,  brain-racking,  forefinger-on- 
the-brow  function.  You  could  see  the 
thoughts  of  the  ladies  and  sometimes  hear 
them  as  a  'professor'  with  long  hair  and 
smiles  of  fathomless  inspiration  wrapped 
46 


SOCRATES  AND   "NEW  THOUGHT" 

himself  in  obscurity  and  called  unto  them 
out  of  the  depths.  He  was  all  depth.  They 
gazed  at  his  soulful  eyes  and  plunged  into 
deep  thought,  catching  at  straws,  and  he 
returned  to  New  York  by  the  next  train 
and  probably  made  another  payment,  on 
account,  to  his  landlady.  Tea  and  con 
versation  followed  his  departure. 

"I  had  observed  that  Mrs.  Revere- 
Chalmers  had  undergone  a  singular  change 
of  aspect,  but  failed  to  locate  the  point  of 
difference  until  a  sister  had  said  to  her  in  a 
tone  of  honeyed  deviltry: 

"'My  dear,  you  are  growing  younger — 
quite  surely  younger,  and  your  hair  is  so 
lovely  and  so — different!  You  know  what 
I  mean — it  has  the  luster  of  youth,  and  the 
shade  is  adorable  without  a  trace  of  gray 
in  it.' 

"This  last  phrase  was  the  point  of  the 
dagger,  and  Mrs.    Chalmers  felt  it.     Sure 
enough,  her  hair  had  changed  its  hue,  and 
was  undeniably  fuller  and  younger. 
47 


"CHARGE    IT'1 

"Then  our  hostess  gave  out  a  confession 
which  has  made  some  history  and  is  fully 
qualified  to  make  more.  It  is  a  curious 
fact  that  one  who  is  abnormal  enough  to 
commit  a  crime  is  apt  to  have  poor  cau 
tion. 

"'I  have  been  taking  lessons  of  the  Pro 
fessor,  and  have  produced  this  hair  by  con 
centration,  '  said  she.  '  It  is  a  creation  of  the 
new  thought  and  so  wonderful  I  could 
almost  forgive  one  for  not  believing  me.' 

"'A  gem  of  thought — a  hair  poem!' 
I  could  not  help  exclaiming.  'Did  it  come 
all  at  once,  in  a  flood  of  inspiration,  or  hair 
by  hair?' 

"'All  at  once,'  she  answered. 

"I  charged  it  and  went  on  as  if  nothing 
great  had  happened. 

"'Considered  as  a  work  of  the  imagina 
tion,  it  is  wonderful,  and  should  rank  with 
the  best  of  Shakespeare's,'  I  assured  her. 
'But  it  will  subject  you  to  unsuspected 
perils,  for  your  footstool  will  be  the  shrine 
48 


SOCRATES  AND   "NEW  THOUGHT" 

of  the  hairless  and  you  shall  see  the  top  of 
every  bald  head  in  America.' 

"Another  lady  sprang  to  her  assistance 
by  telling  how  she  had  extracted  a  pearl 
necklace  from  an  unwilling  husband  who 
had  said  that  he  couldn't  afford  it,  by  con 
centration.  The  new  thought  had  fetched  him. 

"The  noble  unselfishness  with  which  they 
had  used  this  miraculous  gift  of  the  spirit 
appealed  to  Harry  and  to  me. 

"In  that  brilliant  company  was  a  slim 
woman  of  the  armored  cruiser  type,  who  had 
come  to  Betsey  one  day  and  said: 

"You're  spoiling  your  husband.  You 
make  too  much  of  him.  You  don't  seem 
to  know  how  to  manage  a  husband,  and  the 
husbands  of  Pointview  are  being  ruined  by 
your  example.  They  expect  too  much  of 
us.  We  women  have  got  to  stand  together. 
Don't  you  read  the  Female  Gazette?1 

"No — I  have  been  waiting  till  I  could 
get  a  rubber-plant  and  other  accessories,' 
said  Betsey. 

49 


''CHARGE    IT" 

'"Well,  it  may  not  be  en  rtgle,  but  it 
is  full  of  good  sense,'  said  the  lady.  'I've 
brought  an  article  with  me  that  I  wish  you 
would  read/ 

"She  left  the  article,  and  its  title  was 
'How  to  Manage  a  Husband.'  It  averred 
that  too  much  petting,  too  much  indul 
gence,  made  a  man  selfish  and  conceited; 
that  affection  should  be  administered  with 
scientific  reserve.  Men  should  be  taught 
to  wait  on  themselves,  and  all  that. 

"They  called  on  me  for  remarks,  and  I 
said: 

"'I  am  glad  to  have  become  acquainted 
with  the  power  of  concentration.  I  pro 
pose  that  we  all  quit  work  and  begin  to 
concentrate.  Matter  is  only  a  creation 
of  spirit.  Let  us  exercise  our  several 
sovereign  spirits  and  try  to  turn  out  a 
better  line  of  matter.  Let  us  have  fewer 
rocks  and  stones  and  more  comforts. 
Sweat  and  toil  are  a  great  mistake.  Let  us 
turn  Delance's  Hill  into  plum-pudding  and 
50 


SOCRATES  AND  "NEW  THOUGHT" 

the  stones  thereof  into  caramels  and  its  pond 
into  tomato-soup.  Why  not?  They  have 
no  reality,  no  substance.  They  are  nothing 
but  thoughts — and  our  thoughts,  at  that — 
and  why  shouldn't  we  change  'em?  But 
somehow  we  can't  fetch  it.  According 
to  the  Professor,  we  have  got  into  the 
habit  of  thinking  in  terms  of  rock,  soil,  and 
water,  and  we  can't  get  over  it.  There  are 
some  few  of  us  who  stand  for  better  things ; 
but  the  majority  keep  thinking  in  the  old 
rut,  and  we  can't  sway  them.  The  Pro 
fessor  says  that  all  we  need  is  to  get  to 
gether  and  agree  and  then  concentrate. 
But  agreement  doesn't  seem  to  be  necessary. 
You  know  that  there  was  a  time  when 
everybody,  after  much  concentration,  agreed 
that  the  world  was  flat — everybody  but  one 
man.  Now  the  world  was  stubborn.  It 
wouldn't  give  up.  It  hung  on  to  its  round 
ness,  and  let  the  people  think  what  they 
pleased.  They  tried  to  flatten  it  with 
countless  tons  of  concentration,  but  it 


"CHARGE    IT" 

held  its  shape  The  one  man  had  his  way 
about  it.  So  don't  be  discouraged  by  an 
adverse  majority  on  this  plum-pudding 
project.  One  lady  has  shown  us  a  sample 
of  concentrated  hair,  and  it  looks  good  to 
me.  Why  all  this  striving,  all  this  trouble 
about  the  problems  of  life  and  death,  when 
the  straight,  broad  way  of  concentration 
is  open  to  us?  Why  shouldn't  we  have 
concentrated  bread  and  meat  and  shoes  and 
socks  and  silks. 

'"Now  the  subject  of  concentration  is 
by  no  means  new.  It  has  been  a  success 
for  centuries.  The  late  Dr.  Guph  tells  in 
his  memoirs  of  a  singular  race  of  people 
known  as  the  Flub  Dubs  who  once  dwelt 
on  the  lost  isle  of  Atlantis.  They  were  the 
greatest  concentrators  that  ever  lived. 
Every  one  thought  that  he  was  the  greatest 
man  in  the  world,  and  thought  it  so  hard 
and  so  persistently  that  it  came  true — in  a 
way.  Naturally  they  aimed  high,  and  every 
man  thought  himself  the  rightful  king,  and 
52 


SOCRATES  AND   "NEW  THOUGHT" 

a  strife  arose  over  the  crown,  so  that  no  one 
could  wear  it  and  many  were  slain  in  a  great 
tussle.  And  when  they  were  resting  from 
their  struggles  one  rose  and  said:  "Kings 
of  the  realm,  you  are  as  the  dust  under  my 
feet.  I  scorn  you.  A  few  minutes  ago 
I  decided  to  reverse  my  concentrator  and 
aim  at  a  higher  goal.  It  was  easy  of  at 
tainment.  I  have  suddenly  become  the 
biggest  fool  on  this  island  and  the  humblest 
of  all  men." 

1 '  The  announcement  was  greeted  with 
great  applause,  and  within  three  minutes 
his  popularity  had  so  enhanced  that  they 
put  him  on  the  throne.  Such  was  the  power 
of  truth.  And  all  confessed  and  joined  his 
party,  and  he  was  known  as  the  wisest 
king  of  the  Flub  Dubs. 

1 ' '  The  moral  that  Dr.  Guph  adduces  is  this : 
You  cannot  make  figs  out  of  thistles,  and 
unregulated  concentration  leads  to  trouble.' 

"Harry  and  I  started  for  home  in  a  deep 
silence. 

«  53 


"CHARGE    IT" 

"'Hell!'  I  exclaimed,  presently. 

'"And  that  reminds  me  that  I  feel  like 
the  king  of  the  Flub  Dubs/  said  Harry. 

'"Which  indicates  that  you  are  likely 
to  decline  the  office/  I  remarked. 

"'It's  serious  business — this  matter  of 
finding  a  wife/  he  declared. 

'"What's  the  matter  with  Marie  Benson?' 
I  asked.  'There's  a  real  woman  and  the 
best-looking  girl  in  Connecticut/ 

'"Charming  girl!'  he  exclaimed.  'But, 
dear  boy!  she  talks  too  much/ 

'"That  is  a  fault  that  could  be  remedied; 
and,  after  all,  it's  a  kind  of  generosity.  It's 
the  very  opposite  of  concentration/ 

"'Ah — if  she  would  only  reform!'  he 
said. 

"'Leave  that  to  me/  I  answered,  as  he 
dropped  me  at  my  door." 


IN    WHICH    SOCRATES    DISCUSSES    THE    OVER 
PRODUCTION    OF   TALK 


was  mv  war<'  anc  as  Prey  a 

girl  as  ever  led  a  bulldog  or  ate  a 
box  of  chocolates  at  a  sitting.  She  was  a 
charming  fish-hook,  baited  with  beauty  and 
wealth  and  culture  and  remarkable  inno 
cence.  She  had  dangled  about  on  mania's 
rod  and  line  for  a  year  or  so,  but  the  fish 
wouldn't  bite.  For  that  reason  I  grabbed 
the  rod  from  the  old  lady  and  put  on  a  bait 
of  silence  and  a  sinker,  and  moved  to  deep 
water  and  began  to  do  business. 

"Marie  had  a  failing,  for  which,   I  am 
sorry  to  say,   she  was  in  no  way  distin 
guished.     She  talked  too  much,  as  Harry 
55 


''CHARGE    IT" 

had  said.  There  are  too  many  American 
women  who  talk  too  much.  Marie's  mother 
used  to  talk  about  six-thirds  of  the  time. 
You  had  to  hear  it,  and  then  you  had  to 
get  over  it.  She  had  a  way  of  spiking  the 
shoes  of  Time  so  that  every  hour  felt  like 
a  month  while  it  was  running  over  you. 
You  ought  to  have  seen  her  cl  mb  the 
family  tree  or  the  sturdy  old  chestnut  of  her 
own  experience  and  shake  down  the  fruit! 
Marie  had  one  more  tree  in  her  orchard. 
She  had  added  the  spreading  peach  of  a 
liberal  education  to  the  deadly  upas  of 
Benson  genealogy  and  the  sturdy  old  chest 
nut  of  mama's  experience.  The  vox  Ben- 
sonorum  was  as  familiar  as  the  Congre 
gational  bell.  The  supply  of  it  exceeded 
the  demand,  and  after  every  one  was 
loaded  and  ready  to  cast  off,  the  barrels 
came  rolling  down  the  chute. 

"The  next  time  I  saw  Marie  she  was  a 
bit  cast  down.     She  wished  me  to  suggest 
something  for  her  to  do.     Said  she  wanted 
56 


OVER-PRODUCTION    OF    TALK 

a  mission — a  chance  to  do  some  good  in 
the  world.  Thought  she'd  enjoy  being  a 
nurse.  I  felt  sorry  for  the  girl,  and  sud 
denly  I  saw  the  flicker  of  a  brilliant 
thought. 

"'Marie,'  I  said,  'as  a  member  of  The 
Society  of  Useful  Women  you  are  under 
a  serious  obligation,  and  you  have  taste 
for  missionary  work.  Well,  what's  the 
matter  with  beginning  on  Nancy  Doo- 
little?  You  owe  her  a  duty  and  ought 
to  have  the  courage — nay,  the  kindness — 
to  perform  it.  Nancy  talks  too  much.' 

'"Well,  I  shoud  say  so,'  said  Marie. 
'Nancy  is  a  scourge — I  have  often  thought 
of  it.' 

"'She's  downright  wasteful,'  I  went  on. 
'She  fills  every  hour  with  information,  and 
then  throws  on  some  more  It  keeps 
coming.  Your  seams  open,  and  then  it's 
every  hand  to  the  pumps!  Dora  Perkins 
and  Rebecca  Ford  are  just  as  extravagant. 
They  toss  out  gems  of  thought  and  chunks 
57 


"CHARGE    IT" 

of  knowledge  as  if  they  were  as  common  as 
caramels. 

" '  You  should  go  to  these  girls  and  kindly 
but  firmly  remind  them  of  this  fault. 
Tell  them  that  too  much  conversation 
has  created  more  old  maids  and  grass 
and  parlor  widows  than  any  other  cause. 
Give  them  a  little  lecture  on  the  old  law 
of  supply  and  demand.  Show  them  that 
it  applies  to  conversation  as  well  as  to 
cabbages — that  if  one's  talk  is  too  plenti 
ful,  it  becomes  very  cheap.  Suggest  that 
if  Methuselah  had  lived  until  now  and 
witnessed  all  the  adventures  of  the  hu 
man  race,  he  couldn't  afford  to  waste 
his  knowledge.  If  he  talked  only  half  the 
time  nobody  would  believe  him.  They'd 
think  he  was  crazy,  and  they'd  know  why, 
in  past  ages,  everybody  had  died  but  him, 
and  they'd  wonder  how  he  had  managed 
to  survive  the  invention  of  gunpowder. 
These  girls  have  overestimated  the  value 
of  good- will.  Their  securities  are  not  well 
58 


OVER-PRODUCTION    OF    TALK 

secured.  There  are  millions  of  watered 
stock  in  their  treasuries,  and  it  isn't  worth 
five  cents  on  the  dollar.  Marie,  you  can 
have  a  lot  of  fun.  I  almost  envy  you. 

"'Tell  these  girls  that  the  remedy  is 
simple.  They  must  be  careful  to  regulate 
the  supply  to  the  demand.  They  could 
easily  raise  the  price  above  par  by  denying 
now  and  then  that  they  have  any  conver 
sation  in  the  treasury.' 

"Marie  promised  to  undertake  this  im 
portant  work,  and  I  knew  that  in  connec 
tion  with  it  she  would  also  get  some  valuable 
advice. 

"You  see,  this  tendency  to  extravagant 
display  has  sunk  in  very  deep.  Our 
young  people  really  do  know  a  lot,  and 
they  want  others  to  know  that  they  know 
it.  They  are  plumed  with  culture,  and  it 
has  become  a  charge  instead  of  a  credit. 

"Well,  things  began  to  mend*  Betsey 
and  I  went  to  dine  with  the  Bensons  one 
evening,  and  Marie  was  as  quiet  as  a 
59 


"CHARGE    IT' 

lamb.  She  answered  modestly  when  we 
spoke  to  her.  She  told  no  stories;  her 
jeweled  crown  of  culture  was  not  in  sight; 
she  listened  with  notable  success,  and 
delighted  us  with  well-managed  and  il 
luminating  silence.  Neither  she  nor  her 
mother  nor  Mrs.  Bryson  ventured  to  in 
terrupt  the  talk  of  a  noted  professor  who 
dined  with  us.  Marie  was  charming. 

"After  dinner  she  led  me  into  the  library, 
where  we  sat  down  together. 

"She  seemed  a  little  embarrassed,  and 
presently  said,  with  a  laugh,  'I  had  a  talk 
with  those  girls,  as  you  suggested/ 

'"What  did  they  say?'  I  asked. 

'"What  didn't  they  say?'  she  exclaimed. 
'They  flew  at  me  like  wildcats.  They  tore 
me  to  pieces — said  I  was  the  most  dreaded 
talker  in  Pointview,  that  I  had  talked  a 
steady  stream  ever  since  I  was  born,  that 
nobody  had  a  chance  to  get  in  a  word  with 
me,  that  I  had  made  all  the  boys  sick  who  ever 
came  to  see  me.  What  do  you  think  of  that  ?' 
60 


OVER-PRODUCTION    OF    TALK 

'"It's  a  gross  exaggeration!'  I  said. 

'"Well,  I  thought  it  over,  and  made 
up  my  mind  they  we  e  right,'  she  went 
on.  'We  kissed  and  made  up  and  or 
ganized  the  Listeners'  Circle,  and  mama 
and  Mrs.  Bryson  and  Mrs.  Doolittle  have 
joined.  Our  purpose  is  to  regulate  our 
talk  supply  very  strictly  to  the  demand/ 

'"It's  ?.  grand  idea!'  I  exclaimed.  'The 
Ladies'  Talk  and  Information  Trust!  Why, 
it  will  soon  control  the  entire  product  of 
Pointview,  and  can  fix  the  price.  Marie, 
it's  only  a  matter  of  time  when  the  con 
versation  of  you  girls  is  going  to  be  in  the 
nature  of  a  luxury  and  as  much  desired  as 
diamonds.  It  won't  be  long  before  some 
young  fellow  will  offer  his  life  for  one  word 
from  you.' 

"'Oh,  Tm  hopeless  I  Nobody  cares  for 
me — not  a  soul!'  said  Marie. 

'"Wait  and  give  'em  a  chance/  I  an 
swered. 

'"Do  you  think  it's  true  that  I've 
61 


"CHARGE    IT' 

been  such  a  pestilence?'  she  asked,  as 
her  fingers  toyed  with  the  upholstery. 
'You  know  you've  been  a  kind  of  father 
to  me,  and  I  want  you  to  tell  me  frankly 
if  I've  really  made  the  boys  sick.' 

"'Why,  my  dear  child,  if  I  were  a  young 
man  I'd  be  kneeling  at  your  feet,'  I  said; 
and  no  wonder,  for  they  were  a  beautiful 
pair  of  feet,  and  none  ever  supported  a 
nobler  girl.  Then  I  went  on:  'Marie,  your 
talk  is  charming.  The  demand  continues. 
I  feel  honored  by  your  confidence.  Please 
go  on.' 

"'I  believe  I've  been  foolish  without 
knowing  it,'  she  said,  her  smile  beautiful 
with  its  sadness. 

"'My  dear  child,  if  there  were  no  folly 
in  the  world  it  would  be  a  stupid  place, 
and  I  for  one  should  want  to  move,'  I  said. 
'Some  never  discover  their  own  follies,  and 
they  are  hopeless.  You  are  as  wise  as  you 
are  dear.  It's  in  your  power  to  do  a  lot  of 
good.  Think  what  you've  already  accom- 
62 


OVER-PRODUCTION    OF    TALK 

plished.  I  wish  you  would  continue  to 
help  us  discourage  foolish  display  in  Amer 
ica/ 

"'Are  there  any  more  chestnuts  in  the 
fire?'  she  asked,  with  a  laugh.  'Not  that 
I'm  afraid.  I  suppose  the  fire  is  good  for 
me.' 

"Marie,  I  love  your  fingers  too  well  to 
burn  them  unduly,'  I  said.  'By  the  way, 
I  expect  that  Harry  Delance  will  be  want 
ing  to  marry  you  soon.' 

"Harry!'  she  exclaimed.  'I  talked  him 
to  death — and  out  of  the  notion — long 
ago,  and  I'm  not  sorry.  He  isn't  my 
kind.' 

'"Harry's  a  good  fellow,'  I  insisted. 

"'But  he's  so  dreadfully  nice — such  a 
hopeless  aristocrat!  Grandfather  would 
have  a  fit.  I  want  a  big,  full-blooded, 
brawny  chap,  who  isn't  a  slave  to  his  coat 
and  trousers — the  kind  of  man  you've  talked 
so  much  about — one  who  could  get  his 
hands  dirty  and  be  a  gentleman.  I'm 
63 


"CHARGE    IT" 

longing  for  the  outdoor  life — and  the  out 
door  man  to  live  it  with  me.' 

"'Give  Harry  a  chance  —  his  uneduca- 
tion  had  only  just  begun,'  I  urged. 

"I  left  Marie  with  a  rather  serious  look 
in  her  face,  and  began  to  wonder  how  I 
should  accomplish  the  uneducation  of  Harry. 

"That  young  man  came  to  see  me,  in  a 
day  or  two,  at  our  home.  My  new  set  of 
Smollett  lay  on  the  piano,  and  he  greatly 
admired  it.  Above  all  things  Harry  loved 
books,  and  his  specialty  was  Smollett;  he 
had  read  every  tale  in  the  series,  at  college, 
and  made  a  mark  with  his  thesis  on  'The 
Fathers  of  English  Fiction.'  He  spent  an 
hour  of  delight  with  those  books  of  mine. 
Then  he  said  to  me: 

"'Only  fifty  copies  printed?1 

"'Only  fifty,'  I  said. 

"'Could  I  get  a  set?' 

"'All  sold/  I  assured  him,  'but  I  shall  be 
glad  to  give  these  books  to  you  on  two 
conditions/ 

64 


OVER-PRODUCTION    OF    TALK 

"He  turned  in  astonishment. 

"'They  can  do  you  no  further  harm,  and 
my  first  request  is  that  you  do  not  lend 
them.  My  second  is  that  you  take  them 
home  in  my  wheelbarrow  by  daylight  with 
your  own  hands.' 

"He  silently  demurred. 

"'At  last  those  books  have  a  chance  to 
do  some  little  good  in  the  world,  and  I 
don't  want  them  to  lose  it,'  I  urged.  'The 
hands,  feet,  and  legs  of  the  high  and  low 
born  are  slowly  being  deprived  of  their 
rights  in  this  community.  Pride  is  robbing 
them  of  their  ancient  and  proper  offices. 
How  many  of  the  young  men  and  women  of 
our  acquaintance  would  be  seen  on  the 
street  with  a  package  in  their  hands,  to 
say  nothing  of  a  wheelbarrow?  Their 
souls  are  above  it!' 

'"Why  should  they  carry  packages  and 
roll  wheelbarrows?'  Harry  asked.  'Stores 
deliver  goods  these  days.' 

"  'That's  one  reason  why  it  costs  so  much 
65 


"CHARGE    IT' 

to  live.  We  have  to  pay  for  our  pride  and 
our  indolence  and  the  delivery  of  the  goods. 
It's  all  charged  in  the  bill.  Some  member 
of  the  family  used  to  go  to  market  every 
morning  with  his  basket  and  carry  the  goods 
home  with  him.' 

"It  would  be  ridiculous  for  me  to  do 
that,'  said  Harry.  'We're  able  to  pay  the 
bills.' 

"But  you're  doing  a  great  injustice  to 
those  who  are  not.  You  make  the  delivery 
system  a  necessary  thing,  and  those  who 
can't  afford  it  have  to  help  you  stand  the 
expense — a  gross  injustice.  I  want  you 
to  help  me  in  this  cause  of  the  hand  and 
foot.  Your  example  would  be  full  of  in 
spiration.  Excuse  me  a  moment.' 

"I  went  for  the  wheelbarrow  and  rolled 
it  up  to  the  front  door.  Then  we  brought 
out  the  books  and  loaded  them.  That 
done,  I  seized  the  handles  of  the  barrow. 

'"Come  on,'  I  said.     'I'll  do  the  work 
— you  share  the  disgrace  with  me.' 
66 


OVER-PRODUCTION    OF    TALK 

"My  gray  hairs  were  too  much  for 
him. 

'"No;  give  me  the  handles,'  he  insisted. 
'If  it  won't  hurt  you,  it  won't  hurt  me — 
that's  sure.' 

"So,  in  his  silk  hat  and  frock-coat  and 
spats,  with  a  carnation  in  his  button 
hole,  he  seized  the  wheelbarrow  like  a 
man,  and  away  we  went.  I  steered  him 
up  the  Main  Street,  and  people  began  to 
hail  us  with  laughter  from  automobiles, 
and  to  jest  with  us  on  the  sidewalk,  and 
Marie  came  along  with  two  other  pretty 
girls,  and  the  barrow  halted  in  a  gale 
of  merriment. 

"What  in  the  world  are  you  doing?' 
one  of  them  asked. 

'"It's  the  remains  of  the  late  Mr. 
Smollett,'  I  explained. 

"'I'm  setting  an  example  to  the  young,' 
said  Harry,  as  he  mopped  his  forehead. 
'Couldn't  help  it.  I  had  to  do  this  thing.' 

"'Great!'  Marie  exclaimed.  'Simply 
67 


"CHARGE    IT" 

great!  I'm  going  to  get  me  a  wheel 
barrow.  '  J 

"She  would  take  hold  of  the  handles 
and  try  it,  and  went  on  half  a  block  in 
spite  of  our  protests,  creating  much  ex 
citement. 

"That  was  the  first  rude  beginning  of 
The  Basket  and  Wheelbarrow  Brigade  in 
Pointview,  of  which  I  shall  tell  you  later. 
And  now  I  shall  explain  my  generosity — 
it  can  generally  be  explained — and  how 
I  came  by  the  Smollett,  "i 


VI 

IN  WHICH  BETSEY  COMMITS  AN  INDISCRETION 

"/CHRISTMAS  was  approaching,  and 
*~^  Betsey  said  to  me  one  day  that  she 
had  been  guilty  of  a  great  extravagance. 

'"I  know  you  will  forgive  me  just  this 
once/  she  went  on.  'My  love  for  you  is 
so  extravagant  that  I  had  to  keep  pace 
with  it.  You've  simply  got  to  accept 
something  very  grand/ 

"'I  can't  think  of  anything  that  I 
need  unless  it's  a  new  jack-knife,'  I  said. 

"Nonsense!*  she  exclaimed.  'You've 
got  to  let  me  spend  some  money  for  you. 
I've  been  held  down  in  the  expression  of 
my  affections  as  long  as  I  can  stand  it. 
I've  doubled  my  charities  since  we  were 

6  69 


"CHARGE    IT' 

married,  as  a  token  of  my  gratitude,  and 
now  I've  a  right  to  do  something  to  please 
myself/ 

'"All  right!  We'll  lift  the  lid,'  I  said. 
'We  can  lie  about  it,  I  suppose,  and  cover 
up  our  folly.' 

'"Well,  of  course  we  don't  have  to  tell 
what  it  cost,'  said  Betsey;  'and,  Socrates, 
you  can't  expect  to  reform  me  in  a  year. 
It's  taken  half  a  lifetime  to  acquire  my 
follies.' 

"That's  one  trouble  with  the  whole 
problem.  You  can't  tear  down  a  struc 
ture  which  has  been  slowly  rising  for 
half  a  century  in  a  day,  or  in  many  days. 

"Christmas  arrived,  and  Betsey  went 
down-stairs  with  me  and  covered  my  eyes 
in  the  hall  and  led  me  to  the  grand  piano. 
Then  I  was  permitted  to  look,  and  there 
was  the  most  gorgeous  set  of  books  that 
my  eyes  ever  beheld — a  set  of  Smollett, 
in  lovely  brown  calf,  decorated  with  mag 
nificent  gold  tooling!  Yes,  I  love  such 
70 


BETSEY'S    INDISCRETION 

things — who  doesn't? — and  I  gave  Betsey 
a  great  hug,  and  we  sat  down  with  tears 
in  our  eyes  to  look  at  the  pages  of  vellum 
and  the  wonderful  etchings  which  adorned 
so  many  of  them.  They  were  charming. 
I  knew  that  the  books  had  cost  at  least  a 
thousand  dollars.  Grandpa  Smead  looked 
awfully  stern  in  his  gold  frame  on  the  wall. 

"'Now  don't  think  too  badly  of  me,' 
she  urged.  'Every  poor  family  within 
twenty  miles  is  eating  dinner  at  my  ex 
pense  this  Christmas  Day.' 

'"You  are  the  dearest  girl  in  all  the 
land!'  I  said.  'There's  nobody  like  you.' 

"'I  knew  that  you  were  fond  of  the 
classics,'  said  Betsey,  'so  I  consulted  Harry 
Delance,  and  he  suggested  that  I  should 
give  you  a  set  of  Smollett;  said  it  would 
renew  your  youth.  You  know  he's  devoted 
to  Smollett.' 

"'And  why  shouldn't  we  keep  up  with 
Harry?'  I  said. 

"'Well,    you    know    he    took    the    first 


"CHARGE    IT' 

prize  in  literature,  and  ought  to  have  ex 
cellent  taste.  Then  the  young  man  who 
sold  the  set  to  me  is  working  his  way 
through  Yale.  I  was  glad  to  help  him,  too; 
he  recommended  these  books — said  they 
were  moral  and  uplifting — not  at  all  like 
the  modern  trash.  He  knew  that  we  en 
joyed  home  reading.  Mary  will  read  them 
aloud  to  us,  and  we'll  enjoy  them  together.' 

"This  father  of  romance  was  not  un 
known  to  me,  and  I  did  not  share  her 
confidence  in  the  joys  ahead  of  us,  but 
said  nothing. 

"After  a  fine  dinner  Betsey  wanted  to 
start  in  at  once.  We  sat  down  by  the 
fireside  while  her  secretary  began  to  read 
aloud  from  one  of  the  treasured  volumes. 
I  had  not  read  the  story,  and  chose  it 
as  being  the  least  likely  to  make  trouble. 
In  a  short  time  we  came  to  rough  going 
and  the  young  woman  began  to  falter. 

"'That  will  do,'  said  Betsey,  suddenly, 
as  I  tried  to  conceal  my  emotions. 
72 


BETSEY'S    INDISCRETION 

"She  took  the  book  from  the  hands  of 
her  secretary  and  read  on  in  silence  for  a 
minute  or  so. 

"'My  land!'  she  exclaimed,  with  a  look 
of  horror.  'That  book  would  corrupt  the 
morals  of  John  Bunyan.' 

"'Never  mind;  John  never  lived  in 
Pointview,'  I  argued.  'He  didn't  have 
a  chance  to  get  hardened.' 

"Betsey  had  a  determined  look  in  her 
face,  and  rang  for  the  coachman. 

"Til  have  them  stored  in  the  stable,' 
said  she,  firmly. 

"'If  you  don't  keep  it  locked,  all  the 
women  in  the  neighborhood  11  be  in  there,' 
I  warned  her,  knowing  that  she  couldn't 
help  telling  her  friends  of  what  had  hap 
pened. 

"'That's  no  reason  why  the  men  should 
be  unduly  exposed,'  said  Betsey.  'Poor 
things!  It's  my  duty  to  protect  you  as 
long  as  I  can,  Socrates.' 

"I  promised  to  get  rid  of  the  books 
73 


''CHARGE    IT' 

somehow,  and  persuaded  her  to  let  them 
stay  where  they  were  until  I  had  had 
time  to  think  about  it.  Then  she  said: 

'"Socrates,  forgive  me.  I  didn't  mean 
it,  and  I  wanted  to  be  so  nice  to  you. 
I  guess  it's  a  just  punishment  for  my  ex 
travagance.  I  thought  the  modern  novels 
were  bad  enough.  What  can  I  do  for 
you  now?' 

"Always,    when    you're    in    doubt,    do 
nothing,'  I  suggested. 

'"Oh,  I  know  what  I'll  do!'  she  ex 
claimed,  joyfully.  'I'll  knit  you  a  pair 
of  socks  with  my  own  hands.' 

"'Eureka !'  I  shouted.  'Those  socks  shall 
make  footprints  on  the  sands  of  time/  " 


VII 

IN    WHICH    SOCRATES    ATTACKS    THE    WORST 
DOERS   AND    BEST   SELLERS 


evening,  soon  after  that,  Betsey 
and  I  went  to  a  party  at  Deacon 
Benson's.  The  Deacon  is  Marie's  grand 
father  —  a  strict,  old-line  Congregationalist. 
The  old  gentleman  owned  some  two  hun 
dred  acres  in  the  very  heart  of  Pointview  and 
about  a  mile  of  shore-front.  In  all  the 
buying  and  selling,  he  had  refused  to  part 
with  an  acre  of  his  land,  now  worth  at  least 
a  million  dollars.  He  had  willed  it  all  to 
Marie. 

"Deacon  Joe  was  a  relic  of  Puritan  days, 
with  shrewd  eyes  under  heavy  gray  tufts, 
and  a  mouth  bent  like  a  sickle,  and  whiskers 
75 


"CHARGE    IT" 

under  a  strong  chin,  and  lines  in  his  face 
that  suggested  the  heart  of  a  lion.  In  his 
walks  he  was  always  accompanied  by  a 
hickory  cane  and  a  bulldog  whose  coun 
tenance  and  philosophy  were  like  unto  those 
of  the  Deacon. 

"He  was  a  perfectly  honest  man  who  had 
joined  the  church  with  mental  reservations. 
He  had  reserved  the  right  to  employ  cer 
tain  adjectives  and  nouns  which  had  been 
useful  in  Pointview  since  the  days  of  the 
pioneer,  and  which  had  grown  more  and  more 
indispensable  to  the  opinions  of  an  honest 
man.  The  verb  'to  damn'  in  all  its  parts 
and  relations  had  been  one  of  them.  The 
word  *helT  was  another.  It  represented  a 
thing  of  great  conversational  value,  and  he 
recommended  it  with  perfect  frankness  to 
certain  people.  He  loved  hell  and  hard 
cider,  and  hated  Episcopalians.  He  loved 
to  tell  how  one  Episcopalian  had  cheated 
him  in  a  horse  trade,  and  how  another  had 
never  paid  for  a  bushel  of  onions.  That 
76 


WORST  DOERS  AND  BEST  SELLERS 

was  enough  for  him.  He  had  always 
thought  them  a  loose,  unprincipled  lot  with 
no  adequate  respect  for  fire  and  brimstone. 
But  Deacon  Joe  was  honest,  and  his  word 
was  worth  a  hundred  cents  on  the  dollar. 

"Now  the  Delances  were  Episcopalians 
from  away  back — High-Church  Episco 
palians,  at  that.  The  old  man  had  sniffed 
a  good  deal  when  Harry  began  to  pay  at 
tention  to  Marie,  and  had  come  to  see  me 
about  it. 

"I  eased  his  fears  and  appealed  to  his 
avarice.  Harry  had  too  much  money  and 
some  follies,  I  confessed,  but  he  was  sound  at 
heart,  and  I  had  hope  of  making  a  strong 
man  of  him,  and  of  course  his  money  might 
be  a  great  lever  in  his  hands. 

"'Very  well — we'll  keep  an  eye  on  him,' 
he  snapped,  and  left  me  without  another 
word. 

"After  that  Marie  was  allowed  to  go 
out  with  the  young  man  in  his  drag  and 
tandem. 

77 


-CHARGE    IT 

"  Harry  and  his  sister  came  to  the  party 
at  Deacon  Joe's,  and  brought  with  them  a 
late  volume  of  D'Annunzio  for  Marie  to 
read.  Harry  wished  to  know  if  I  had 
read  it,  and  gave  us  a  talk  on  the  realism  of 
this  modern  Italian  author. 

"Again  I  drew  on  the  memoirs  of  Dr. 
Godfrey  Vogeldam  Guph,  and  this  time 
I  explained  that  the  learned  doctor  had  all 
the  talents  but  one.  He  never  told  a  lie — 
never  but  once,  and  that  was  on  his  death 
bed.  Yes,  it  was  a  little  late,  but  still  it 
was  in  time  to  save  his  reputation,  and, 
possibly,  even  his  soul.  To  a  man  of  his 
parts  the  truth  had  always  been  good 
enough,  and  lying  unnecessary.  If  he  had 
told  a  lie  it  wouldn't  have  amounted  to  any 
thing — everybody  would  have  believed  it. 
He  wouldn't  have  got  any  credit — poor 
man!  He  had  no  more  use  for  a  lie  than  a 
fish  has  for  a  mackintosh  — until  he  came  to 
his  last  touching  words,  which  were  delivered 
to  a  minister  and  his  sister  Sophia,  who 
78 


WORST  DOERS  AND  BEST  SELLERS 

had  been  reading  to  him  from  a  book  of 
D'Annunzio. 

" '  My  chance  has  arrived  at  last,'  he  said 
to  Sophia,  '  and  in  order  that  I  may  make 
the  most  of  it,  you  will  please  send  for  a 
minister.' 

"The  latter  came,  and,  seeing  the  book, 
asked  the  good  man  if  he  had  read  it. 

" '  Alas !  my  friend,  that  it  should  be  neces 
sary  for  me  to  tell  a  lie  on  my  death-bed,' 
said  the  Doctor.  'But  now,  at  last,  I  tell 
it  proudly  and  promptly.  I  have  not  read 
that  book.' 

"  'And  therein  I  do  clearly  see  the  truth,' 
said  the  wise  old  minister. 

"'Which  is  this,'  the  learned  Doctor  con 
fessed.  '  I  have  come  to  an  hour  when  a  lie, 
and  nothing  but  a  lie/can  show  my  sense  of 
shame.  I  solemnly  swear  that  I  have  not 
read  it!' 

"'Well,  at  least  you're  a  noble  liar,'  said 
the  man  of  God.  'I  absolve  you.' 

"'I  claim  no  credit — I  am  only  doing  my 
79 


"CHARGE    IT' 

duty/  said  the  good  Doctor,  with  a  sign  of 
ineffable  peace. 

"As  soon  as  I  could  get  his  attention, 
I  called  Harry  aside  and  whispered:  'In 
Heaven's  name,  boy,  get  hold  of  that  book 
and  hang  on  to  it.' 

"'Why?'  he  asked. 

'"You  don't  know  the  old  man  as  I  do 
— that's  why,'  I  said.  'If  he  should  hap 
pen  to  read  it,  he'd  go  after  you  with  his 
grandfather's  sword  the  next  time  you 
showed  up  here.' 

"Marie  stood  near  us,  and  I  beckoned  to 
her,  and  she  came  to  my  side. 

'"The  book,'  said  Harry — 'would  you  let 
me  take  it?' 

"'I  took  it  to  my  grandfather,  and  he  is 
reading  it  in  his  room,'  she  answered. 
'Shall  I  go  and  get  it?' 

"Harry  hesitated. 

'"He  won't  mind,'  said  Marie;  'I'll  go 
and  get  it.' 

"And  away  she  went. 
80 


WORST  DOERS  AND  BEST  SELLERS 

"She  came  back  to  us  soon,  a  bit  embar 
rassed. 

'"He  seems  to  be  very  much  interested 
and — and  a  little  cross,'  said  she.  'I 
think  he  will  bring  it  out  to  you  soon.' 

"Harry  turned  pale. 

"'You  look  sick,  old  man,'  I  said. 

"  'I'm  not  feeling  very  well,'  said  he,  'and 
I  think  I  shall  excuse  myself  and  go  home. ' 

"There  was  danger  of  a  scene,  but  he 
got  away  unharmed.  By  and  by  the  lion- 
hearted  deacon  came  out  of  his  room,  asked 
severely  for  'young  Delance, '  wandered 
through  the  crowd,  answered  indignantly 
a  few  inquiries  about  his  health,  and  re 
turned  to  his  lair. 

"I  saw  that  the  Deacon  was  mad.  New 
New  England  had  imprudently  bumped 
into  old  New  England,  and  it  was  too  soon 
to  estimate  the  damage." 

The  Honorable  Socrates  Potter  laughed 
as  he  filled  his  pipe,  and  resumed  with  an 
attitude  of  ease  and  comfort : 
81 


-CHARGE    IT" 

"I'm  a  bit  of  a  Puritan  myself,  although 
I  understood  Harry  better  than  did  the  Dea 
con.  The  young  people  have  been  captured 
by  the  frankness  of  the  Latin  races.  They 
call  It  emancipation.  Travel  and  the  higher 
education  have  opened  the  storage  vats  of 
foreign  degeneracy  and  piped  them  into  our 
land.  Certain  young  men  who  have  been 
'finished'  abroad,  where  they  filled  their 
souls  with  Latin  lewdness,  have  turned  it 
into  fiction  and  a  source  of  profit.  Women 
buy  their  books  and  rush  through  them,  and 
only  touch  the  low  places.  There  they  lie 
entranced,  thick  as  autumnal  leaves  that 
strew  the  brooks  in  Vallombrosa.  Like  the 
women  in  the  sack  of  Ismail,  they  sit  them 
down  and  watch  for  the  adultery  to  begin. 

"The  imagination  of  the  old  world  seems 
to  have  gone  wild — Oscar  Wilde !  How  the 
Oscars  have  thriven  there  since  the  first 
of  them  went  to  jail ! — a  degenerate  dynasty ! 
— hiding  the  stench  of  spiritual  rot  with 
the  perfume  of  faultless  rhetoric,  speaking 
82 


WORST  DOERS  AND  BEST  SELLERS 

the  unspeakable  with  the  tongues  of  angels 
and  of  prophets!  And  mostly,  my  boy, 
they  have  thriven  on  the  dollars  of  American 
women  under  the  leadership  of  modern 
culture.  And,  you  know,  the  maiden  fol 
lows  mama.  She  is  an  apologist  of  sublime 
lewdness,  of  emancipated  human  caninity. 
Now  I  am  no  prude.  I  can  stand  a  fairly 
strong  touch  of  human  nature.  I  can  even 
put  up  with  a  good  deal  of  the  frankness  of 
the  cat  and  dog.  But  the  frankness  of 
some  modern  authors  makes  me  sorry  that 
Adam  was  a  common  ancestor  of  theirs 
and  mine.  It's  a  disgrace  to  Adam  and  the 
whole  human  brotherhood.  We  sons  of  the 
Puritans  ought  to  get  busy  in  the  old  cause. 
Noah  had  the  good  sense  to  keep  the  animals 
and  the  people  apart,  and  that's  what  we've 
always  stood  for." 


VIII 

IN   WHICH    SOCRATES    ATTACKS   THE    HELMET 
AND   THE    BATTLE-AX 


came  to  see  us  at  our 

morning  and  began  to  cry  as  soon  as 
she  had  sat  down  in  the  library.  The 
thing  I  had  looked  for  had  come  to  pass. 
Her  grandfather  had  dropped  Harry  from 
his  list,  and  warned  him  to  keep  off  the  rag- 
carpet.  There  was  to  be  no  more  prancing 
around  in  the  'toot-coach'  and  the  'Harry- 
cart,'  as  he  called  them,  for  Marie.  In  his 
view  it  was  the  surest  means  of  getting  to 
perdition.  Harry  was  an  idler,  and  he  had 
always  found  that  an  idle  brain  was  the 
devil's  workshop.  Marie  might  be  polite 
to  the  young  man,  but  she  must  keep  her 
84 


HELMET    AND    BATTLE-AX 

side  of  the  road  and  see  that  there  was 
always  plenty  of  room  between  them. 

'"He's  so  hateful,'  Marie  said  of  her 
grandfather.  'He  made  such  a  fuss  about 
our  getting  a  crest  that  we've  a  perfect 
right  to!  Mama  had  to  give  it  up.' 

'"What!  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that 
you  have  no  crest!'  I  inquired,  anxiously. 

' ' '  We  have  one,  but  we  cannot  use  it ;  our 
hands  are  tied,'  was  her  sorrowful  answer. 

'"I'm  astonished.  Why,  everybody  is 
going  to  have  a  crest  in  Pointview. 

'"The  other  day  I  suggested  to  Bridget 
Maloney,  our  pretty  chambermaid,  that 
she  ought  to  have  the  Maloney  crest  on  her 
letter-heads. 

'""What's  that?"  says  Bridget. 

'""What's  that!"  I  said,  with  a  look  of 
pity. 

'"Then  I  showed  her  a  letter  from  Mrs. 
Van   Alstyne,    with   a   lion   and   a   griffin 
cuffing  each  other  black  and  blue  at  the 
top  of  the  sheet. 
7  85 


"CHARGE    IT" 

"'"It's  grand!"  said  she. 

"'"It's  the  Van  Alstyne  crest,"  I  said. 
"  It 's  a  proof  of  respectability.  Aren't  you  as 
good  as  they  are?" 

'" "Every  bit!"  said  she. 

"' "That's  what  I  thought.  Don't  you 
often  feel  as  if  you  were  better  than  a  good 
many  people  you  know?" 

"'"Sure  I  do." 

"'"Well,  that's  a  sign  that  you're  blue- 
blooded,"  said  I.  "Probably  you've  got 
a  king  in  your  family  somewhere.  A 
crest  shows  that  you  suspect  your  an 
cestors — nothing  more  than  that.  It  isn't 
proof,  so  there's  no  reason  why  you  shouldn't 
have  it.  You  ought  not  to  be  going  around 
without  a  crest,  as  if  you  were  a  common 
servant-girl.  Why,  every  kitchen-maid  will 
be  thinking  she's  as  good  as  you  are.  You 
want  to  be  in  style.  You  have  money  in 
the  bank,  and  not  half  the  people  who  have 
crests  are  as  well  able  to  afford  'em." 

""'How  much  do  they  cost?" 
86 


IT'S    THE   VAN    ALSTYNE   CREST/    I    SAID        '  IT'S    A    PROOF    OF 
RESPECTABILITY1  " 


HELMET    AND    BATTLE-AX 

"'"Nothing — at  least,  yours  '11  cost  noth 
ing,  Bridget.  I  shall  be  glad  to  buy  one 
for  you." 

"'The  simple  girl  thanked  me,  and  I 
found  the  Maloney  crest  for  her,  and  had 
the  plate  made  and  neatly  engraved  on 
a  hundred  sheets  of  paper. 

"'Next  week  the  Pointview  Advocate 
will  print  this  item:  "Miss  Bridget  Ma 
loney,  the  genial  chambermaid  of  Mrs. 
Socrates  Potter,  uses  the  Maloney  crest 
on  her  letter-heads.  She  is  said  to  be  a 
lineal  descendant  of  his  Grace  Bryan 
Maloney,  one  of  the  early  dukes  of  Ire 
land." 

'"Bridget  is  haughty,  well-mannered,  and 
a  neat  dresser.  She's  a  pace-maker  in 
her  set.  Even  the  high-headed  servants 
of  Warburton  House  imitate  her  hats  and 
gowns. 

"'Yesterday  Katie  O'Neil,  one  of  Mrs. 
Warburton's  maids,  came  to  me  for  in 
formation  as  to  the  heraldry  of  her  house. 
87 


"CHARGE    IT'1 

I  found  a  crest  for  Katie;  and  then  came 
Mary  Maginness;  and  Bertha  Schimp- 
felheim,  the  daughter  of  a  real  German 
count ;  and  one  August  Bernheimer,  a  young 
barber  of  baronial  blood;  and  Pietro  Can- 
taveri,  our  prosperous  bootblack,  who  was 
the  grandson  of  an  Italian  countess;  and 
so  it  goes,  and  soon  all  the  high-born  servers 
of  Pointview  will  be  supplied  with  armorial 
bearings. 

'"These  claims  to  distinction  shall  be 
soberly  chronicled  in  the  Advocate.  Not 
one  is  to  be  overlooked  or  treated  with 
any  lack  of  respect.  On  the  contrary, 
the  whole  thing  will  be  exploited  with 
a  proper  sense  of  awe.' 

"  Marie  laughed. 

"'Wait  till  I  tell  mama/  she  said.  'It's 
lucky  you  told  me.  It's  saved  us.  I  guess 
grandfather  was  right  about  that.' 

'"And  he's  right  about  Harry,  too,  I  said. 
'But  don't  despair;  I'm  trying  to  put  a  new 
mainspring  in  the  boy.  If  I  succeed,  your 
88 


HELMET    AND    BATTLE-AX 

grandfather  may  have  to  change  his 
mind.' 

"She  went  away  comforted,  but  not 
happy. 

"Well,  I  went  on  with  the  crest  campaign. 
Bertha,  Pietro,  and  the  others  got  their 
crests  and  saw  their  names  in  the  paper. 

"The  supply  of  crests  was  soon  perfectly 
adequate,  and  among  our  best  people  the 
demand  for  them  began  to  diminish,  and 
suddenly  ceased.  The  beast  rampant  and 
couchant,  the  helmet  and  the  battle-ax, 
associated  only  with  mixed  tenses  and  mis 
placed  capitals  according  to  their  ancient 
habit.  This  chambermaid  grammar  was 
referred  to  by  my  friend,  Dr.  Guph,  as  the 
'battle-ax  brand' — a  designation  of  some 
merit.  Expensive  stationery  fell  into  the 
fireplaces  of  Pointview,  and  armorial  plates 
were  found  in  the  garbage.  The  family 
trees  of  the  village  were  deserted.  Not  a 
bird  twittered  in  their  branches.  The  sub 
ject  of  genealogy  was  buried  in  deep  silence, 
89 


-CHARGE    IT'1 

save  when  the  irreverent  referred  to  some 
late  addition  to  our  new  aristocracy. 

"Now  I  want  to  make  it  clear  that  we 
have  no  disrespect  for  the  customs  of  any 
foreign  land.  If  I  were  living  in  a  foreign 
land  and  needed  evidence  of  my  respec 
tability,  I'd  have  a  crest,  if  it  was  likely  to 
prove  my  case.  But  America  was  founded 
by  the  sons  of  the  yeomen,  and  the  yeomen 
established  their  respectability  with  other 
evidence.  Their  brains  were  so  often  touched 
by  the  battle-ax  that  some  of  us  have  an 
hereditary  shyness  about  the  head,  and  we 
dodge  at  every  baronial  relic. " 


IX 


IN  WHICH  SOCRATES  INCREASES  THE  SUPPLY 
OF  SPLENDOR 

"IN  due  time  the  Society  of  Useful  Women 
1  met  at  our  house,  and  I  was  invited  to 
make  a  few  remarks,  and  said  in  effect: 

'"We  are  trying  to  correct  the  evil  of 
extravagant  display  in  America,  and  first 
I  ask  you  to  consider  the  cause  of  it.  We 
find  it  in  the  ancient  law  of  supply  and  de 
mand.  The  reason  that  women  love  to 
array  themselves  in  silk  and  laces  and 
jewels  and  picture-hats  and  plumes  of 
culture  and  sunbursts  of  genealogy  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  supply  of  these  things  has 
generally  been  limited.  Their  cost  is  so 
high,  therefore,  that  few  can  afford  them, 
91 


"CHARGE    IT" 

and  those  who  wear  them  are  distinguished 
from  the  common  herd.  This  matter  of 
buying  distinction  is  the  cause  of  our 
trouble.  Now  I  propose  that  we  increase 
the  supply  of  jewels,  silks,  laces,  picture- 
hats,  and  ancestors  in  Pointview — that  we 
bring  them  within  the  reach  of  all,  and  aim 
a  death-blow  at  the  distinction  to  be  ob 
tained  by  displaying  them.  There  isn't  a 
servant-girl  in  this  community  who  doesn't 
pant  for  luxuries.  Why  shouldn't  she? 
I  move  that  we  have  a  committee  to  con 
sider  this  inadequate  supply  of  luxuries, 
with  the  power  to  increase  the  same  at  its 
own  expense.' 

"I  was  appointed  chairman  of  that  com 
mittee,  and  went  to  work,  with  Betsey  and 
Mrs.  Warburton  as  coadjutors. 

"We  stocked  a  store  with  clever  imita 
tions  of  silks,  satins,  and  old  lace,  and  the 
best  assortment  of  Brummagem  jewelry 
that  could  be  raked  together.  We  had  a 
great  show-case  full  of  glittering  paste 
92 


THE    SUPPLY    OF    SPLENDOR 

bracelets,  tiaras,  coronets,  sunbursts,  dog- 
collars,  rings,  necklaces — all  extremely  mo 
dish  and  so  handsome  that  they  would  have 
deceived  any  but  trained  eyes.  Our  pearls 
and  sapphires  were  especially  attractive. 
We  hired  a  skilled  dressmaker,  familiar 
with  the  latest  modes,  and  a  milliner  who 
could  imitate  the  most  stunning  hats  on 
Fifth  Avenue  at  reasonable  prices.  Every 
servant  in  good  standing  in  our  community 
was  permitted  to  come  and  see  and  buy  and 
say  'Charge  it.' 

"Mrs.  Warburton's  ball  for  the  servants 
of  Pointview,  to  be  given  in  the  Town  Hall, 
was  coming  near.  It  happened  that  the 
committee  of  arrangements  included  Marie 
and  the  young  Reverend  Robert  Knowles. 
Their  intimacy  began  in  the  work  of  that 
committee.  For  days  they  rode  about  in 
the  minister's  motor-car  getting  ready  for 
the  ball  and  for  the  greater  intimacy  that 
followed  it. 

"Our  ball  sent  its  radiance  over  land  and 
93 


"CHARGE    IT" 

sea.  Sunbursts  shone  like  stars  in  the  Milky 
Way.  A  fine  orchestra  furnished  music. 
Reporters  from  New  York  and  other  cities 
were  present. 

"The  nurses,  cooks,  kitchen-girls,  laun 
dresses,  and  chambermaids  of  Pointview 
were  radiant  in  silk,  lace,  diamonds,  pearls, 
and  rubies.  The  costumes  were  brilliant, 
but  all  in  good  taste.  Alabaster?  Why, 
my  dear  boy,  they  would  have  made  the 
swell  set  resemble  a  convention  of  bean 
poles.  For  the  matter  of  busts,  they  busted 
the  record! 

"The  only  mishap  occurred  when  Bertha 
Schimpfelheim — some  call  her  Big  Bertha 
— slipped  and  fell  in  a  waltz,  injuring  the 
knee  of  her  companion.  To  my  surprise 
the  brainiest  of  these  working-folk  saw  the 
satire  in  which  they  were  taking  part,  and 
entered  into  it  with  all  the  more  spirit 
because  they  knew. 

"The  presence  of  Mr.  Warburton,  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Delance,  Marie,  and  the  Reverend 
94 


THE    SUPPLY    OF    SPLENDOR 

Robert  Knowles  on  the  floor  insured  proper 
decorum  and  lent  an  air  of  seriousness  to 
the  event.  It  proved  an  effective  back 
ground  for  Marie.  She  shone  like  a  pigeon- 
blood  ruby  among  garnets.  She  wore  no 
jewels,  and  was  distinguished  only  by  her 
beauty  and  the  simplicity  of  her  costume 
and  the  unmistakable  evidence  of  good 
breeding  in  her  face  and  manners. 

"Harry  sat  with  me  in  the  gallery. 

'"She's  wonderful!'  he  exclaimed.  'All 
this  rococo  ware  simply  emphasizes  her 
charm.  Only  a  girl  of  brains  could  carry 
it  off  as  she  does.  She's  among  them  and 
yet  apart.  An  old  duke  once  told  me  that 
if  you  want  to  know  the  rank  of  a  lady,  ob 
serve  how  she  treats  an  inferior.  It's  quite 
true.  By  Jove !  I'm  in  love  with  Marie,  and 
I'm  going  to  make  her  my  wife  if  possible.' 

"'That's  one  really  substantial  result 
of  the  ball,'  I  said. 

4 ' '  Do  you  think  that  she  cares  for  Kno wles 
— that  minister  chap?"1 
95 


"CHARGE    IT' 

1 '  'I'm  inclined  to  think  that  she  likes  you 
better,'  I  said. 

"Is  your  inclination  encouraged  by 
evidence?' 

'"That  query  I  must  decline  to  answer/ 
said  I. 

"Well,  you  know,  I'm  not  going  to  be 
long  in  doubt,'  the  boy  declared,  as  he  left 
me. 

"The  event  was  an  epoch-maker.  Long 
reports  of  it  appeared  in  the  daily  press 
and  traveled  far  in  a  surge  of  thoughtful 
merriment.  For  instance:  'Miss  Mary 
Maginness,  the  accomplished  lady-in-wait 
ing  of  Mrs.  William  Warburton,  of  War- 
burton  House,  wore  a  coronet  and  a  dog- 
collar  of  diamonds  above  a  costume  of  white 
brocaded  satin,  trimmed  with  old  duchesse 
lace  and  gold  ornaments.  Miss  Maginness 
is  a  lineal  descendant  of  Lord  Rawdon 
Maginness,  of  Cork,  who  early  in  the  seven 
teenth  century  commanded  an  army  that 
drove  the  Italians  out  of  Ireland.' 
96 


THE    SUPPLY    OF    SPLENDOR 

"And  so  it  went,  with  column  after 
column  of  glittering  detail.  Since  then 
the  servants  have  enjoyed  a  monopoly  in 
splendor — it's  been  a  kind  of  Standard 
Jewel  Company,  and  certain  rich  men  have 
boasted  in  my  presence  that  they  haven't  a 
jewel  in  their  houses;  and  one  added  with 
quite  unneeded  emphasis:  'Not  a  measly 
jewel.  My  wife  says  that  they  suggest 
dish-water  and  aprons.' 

'"It  is  too  funny!'  said  Mrs.  Warburton. 
'You  know  those  jewels  at  the  ball  were 
quite  as  real  as  many  that  are  worn  by 
ladies  of  fashion.  Most  rich  women  who 
want  to  save  themselves  worry  keep  their 
jewels  in  the  strong-box  and  wear  replicas 
of  paste  and  composition.' 

"The  instalment  jeweler  has  gone  out 
of  business,  and  half  a  dozen  servant- 
girls  have  refused  to  make  further  pay 
ments  on  their  solitaires  and  returned 
them. 

"One  singular  thing  happened.  Nearly 
97 


-CHARGE    IT" 

all  those  servants  paid  their  bills  to  our 
store,  and  we  closed  out  with  an  unexpected 
profit,  while  a  number  of  stores  who  charged 
their  goods  to  the  noble  band  of  employers 
have  stopped  for  need  of  money.'* 


IN  WHICH  SOCRATES  BREAKS  THE  DRAG  AND 
TANDEM   MONOPOLY   IN   POINTVIEW 

"  LJ  ARRY'S  father  came  often  for  a  smoke 
*  *  and  talk  with  me  after  dinner,  and  his 
favorite  subject  was  Harry.  As  a  subject 
of  conversation,  Harry  was  more  successful 
than  the  average  crime.  In  this  respect 
he  resembled  a  divorce  or  a  murder.  That's 
how  it  happened  that  Harry  got  on  my 
mind.  He  is  one  of  the  most  skilful  riders 
of  the  human  mind  that  I  know  of.  He  was 
wearing  us  out,  and  we  were  all  bucking  to 
get  him  off.  Well,  his  father  was  thinking 
about  him  while  I  was  thinking  about  the 
rest  of  Pointview.  It  was  another  case  of 
Rome  and  Caesar.  Harry's  last  achieve- 
99 


-CHARGE    IT" 

ment  was  to  accuse  his  father  of  being  the 
fossiliferous  remnant  of  an  ancient  time. 

'"The  truth  is,  Harry  hasn't  enough 
competition  in  his  line,'  I  suggested,  one 
evening.  'The  other  boys  are  doing  well, 
but  they  don't  keep  up  with  him. 

"'You  know  after  I  left  college,  in  my 
youth,  I  spent  a  couple  of  years  in  Wyo 
ming.  Well,  Mary  Ann  Crowder  was  the 
only  single  lady  within  a  hundred  miles, 
and  she  was  the  most  obstreperous  damn 
critter  that  I  ever  saw.  She  had  a  monop 
oly  an'  knew  it,  an*  wasn't  decently  polite. 
Put  on  more  style  than  a  nigger  at  a  cake- 
walk.  Though  she  had  red  hair  an'  only 
one  eye,  some  of  the  boys  used  to  ride  sixty 
miles  for  a  visit  with  her.  Then  they  had 
to  swim  the  Snake  River  and  maybe  wrestle 
with  a  tame  bear  that  was  loose  in  the  door- 
yard.  By  and  by  a  man  with  two  un 
married  daughters  moved  on  to  a  ranch 
near  us,  and  then  Mary  Ann  began  to  be 
polite.  She  suddenly  became  a  human 

100 


DRAG  AND  TANDEM  MONOPOLY 

being,  an'  killed  the  bear,  an'  moved  across 
the  river  an'  married  the  first  man  that 
proposed,  and  lived  happily  ever  after. 

"'What  we  need  here  is  another  drag 
and  tandem.' 

"'Get  what  you  need,  and  I'll  pay  the 
bills,'  said  Harry's  father. 

"So  I  went  to  a  sale  in  New  York,  bought 
my  drag  and  tandem-cart,  and  had  them 
shipped  to  Point  view.  Our  local  sign- 
painter  put  a  crest  or,  rather,  a  kind  of 
royal  hatchment,  on  the  panels  of  both. 
Then  I  sold  them  for  next  to  nothing  to  a 
local  livery  on  conditions.  Its  new  owner 
agreed  to  use  the  drag  for  chowder-parties, 
and  to  break  the  worst-looking  nags  in  his 
stable  to  drive  tandem  on  the  cart. 

"Tommy  Ruggles,  a  smart-looking  knight 
of  the  currycomb,  whose  first  name  was  a 
kitchen  word  in  Pointview,  sprang  to  my 
assistance.  He  had  curly  hair,  and  a  good 
deal  of  natural  cuteness,  and  was,  more 
over,  'a  divvle  with  the  girls.'  He  con- 

8  ioi 


"CHARGE    IT' 

tracted  with  me  to  take  a  selected  list  of 
female  servants  for  an  airing  in  the  tandem- 
cart.  He  was  to  get  a  royalty  of  five  dollars 
a  head  on  every  servant  that  was  properly 
aired,  with  a  small  premium  on  red  ones. 

"He  began  with  Big  Bertha,  our  worthy 
German  countess.  Tommy  had  a  playful 
humor,  and  cracked  his  long  whip  over  the 
rough-harnessed  nags  and  merrily  tooted 
his  horn  as  the  rig  lumbered  along  through 
the  main  streets  of  our  village.  Many 
laughed  and  many  wondered,  while  an  army 
of  noisy  kids  followed  and  hung  on  behind. 

"Tommy  got  his  second  girl,  who  was 
hit  on  the  head  with  a  ripe  tomato,  and 
then  it  was  all  over.  The  girls  wouldn't 
stand  for  it.  The  sport  had  become  too 
exciting.  Tommy  told  me  how  he  had  in 
vited  Bridget  Maloney,  and  she  had  said: 
'Na-a-ah!  Do  yez  take  me  for  an  idiot? 
Sure  every  rotten  egg  in  the  town  would 
be  jumpin'  at  me.' 

"It  suggested  an  idea.     As  the  imitation 

IO2 


DRAG  AND  TANDEM  MONOPOLY 

idiots  had  given  out,  we  would  try  the  real 
thing.  So  I  'phoned  the  manager  of  our 
thriving  idiot  asylum  on  the  Post  Road 
and  arranged  to  have  Tommy  take  one  of 
his  patients  every  day  for  a  drive  in  the 
cart.  Why  shouldn't  all  the  idiots  enjoy 
themselves?  Fresh  air  would  be  good  for 
them.  It  would  turn  the  cart  into  a  charity 
which  would  cover  a  part  of  my  sins.  I 
asked  for  the  better  class  of  idiots — the 
quiet  ones,  who  had  sense  enough  to  ap 
preciate  a  good  thing.  The  parade  began 
and  continued  day  after  day. 

"Harry  had  retired  his  tandem  after 
Tom,  with  a  stiff -backed  idiot  by  his  side, 
had  clattered  after  him  through  the  village 
behind  the  two  spavined  nags  to  the  amuse 
ment  of  many  people.  He  had  kept  up 
with  Harry. 

"Soon  that  kind  of  a  rig  was  known  as  the 

Idiot  Wagon.     Then  Tommy  resigned;  it 

was  more  than  he  could  stand.     He  said 

he  was  willing  to  do  any  honest  work  for 

103 


"CHARGE    IT" 

money,  but  not  that.  He  said  that  the 
idiots  imagined  themselves  rich,  and  put 
on  so  much  style  that  it  made  the  whole 
thing  ridiculous. 

'"Never  mind — it's  the  habit  of  idiots,' 
I  said. 

'"One  of  'em  thinks  he's  Napoleon 
Bonaparte,  an'  calls  me  his  man,  and  wears 
a  plug  hat  and  sits  as  straight  as  a  ramrod, 
and  bows  to  the  people  when  they  laugh 
at  him,'  said  Tommy.  'Some  of  'em  get 
stuck  on  the  cart,  and  it's  a  fight  to  get  'em 
out  of  it.  I  tell  ye,  I'm  sick  o'  the  job. 
The  sight  o'  that  cart  makes  me  feel 
nutty.' 

"'Never  mind,  Tom,'  I  said;  'you've 
been  a  public  benefactor,  and  you  and  the 
cart  are  entitled  to  an  honorable  discharge.' 

"Every  bright  day  the  drag  was  tooling 
over  the  road  with  picnic-parties  on  their 
way  to  one  of  the  popular  beaches.  Our 
local  lodges  and  political  clubs,  and  now 
and  then  a  load  of  Italians,  were  able  to 
104 


DRAG  AND  TANDEM  MONOPOLY 

enjoy  the  luxury  which  had  been  the  ex 
clusive  delight  of  Harry  and  the  fluffy 
maidens  of  Pointview. 

"  Drags  an'  tandems  are  all  right  if  you 
don't  go  too  far  with  'em.  We  were  just 
in  time  to  prevent  them  from  becoming 
tools  of  degeneration  in  our  village." 


XI 


IN     WHICH     SUNDRY     PEOPLE     MAKE     GREAT 
DISCOVERIES 

"HPHERE  were  many  private  panics  in 
A  Pointview.  It  was  my  privilege  to 
observe,  under  calm  exteriors,  a  raging  fever 
of  excitement — characters  going  bankrupt, 
collectors  wandering  in  a  fruitless  quest. 
One  little  rill  that  flowed  into  the  swift 
river  of  national  trouble  issued  from  the 
bosom  of  my  clerk,  Mr.  'Cub'  Sayles. 
It  had  been  one  of  the  most  placid  bosoms 
in  Pointview.  Now  it  was  in  the  midst 
of  what  I  have  since  referred  to  as  the 
'Violet  and  Supper  Panic  of  1907.' 

"Cub  was  a  quiet,  hard-working,  serious- 
minded  boy  whose  mother  moved  in  the 
106 


GREAT    DISCOVERIES 

higher  circles  of  Boston.  He  had  a  low, 
pleasant  voice,  a  touch  of  Harry's  dialect, 
and  a  sad  face.  He  had  asked  for  a  higher 
salary,  and  I  had  asked  for  information. 

' ' '  You  see  every  time  I  go  to  call  on  my 
girl  I  have  to  take  a  bunch  of  violets  or  a 
two-pound  box  of  candy,'  he  said.  'Then 
if  we  go  to  the  theater  her  chaperon  has 
to  be  with  us — don't  you  know?  She's 
a  stout  lady  who  complains  of  faintness 
before  the  play  ends,  and  I  have  to  ask 
them  out  to  supper.  Then  I  am  always 
greatly  alarmed,  for  you  never  can  tell  what 
will  happen,  sir,  with  two  ladies  at  supper 
and  only  twenty  dollars  in  your  pocket, 
and  both  ladies  fond  of  game  and  crab  meat. 
It's  really  very  trying.  I  sit  and  tremble  as 
I  watch  them,  and  go  home  with  only  a 
feeble  remnant  of  my  salary,  and  next  day 
I  have  to  pawn  my  diamond  ring.' 

'"All  that  isn't  honest,'  I  said.  'You're 
getting  her  favor  under  false  pretenses. 
You're  trying  to  make  her  believe  that  you 
107 


"CHARGE    IT' 

are  a  sort  of  aristocrat  with  lots  of  money. 
Why  don't  you  tell  her  the  truth — that  you 
can't  afford  violets,  that  the  two-pound 
box  is  a  burden  that  is  breaking  your  back, 
and  that  every  theater-supper  sends  you 
to  the  pawnbroker's?' 

"'I  can't — she  would  throw  me  over/ 
he  explained.  'The  girls  expect  those 
things.  They  like  to  show  and  talk  about 
them — don't  you  know?  It's  the  fashion. 
Our  best  young  men  do  it,  sir.' 

"  'Well,  if  you  are  willing  to  give  up  your 
honor  for  a  lady's  smile  you  won't  do  for 
me,'  I  said.  'You  must  not  only  tell  the 
truth,  but  live  it.  You  must  be  just  what 
you  are — a  poor  boy  working  for  twenty 
dollars  a  week.  If  the  girl  doesn't  like 
it  she's  unfit  to  associate  with  honest 
men.  If  you  don't  like  it  I  don't  like 
you.' 

"Perspiration  had  begun  to  dampen  the 
brow  of  Cub. 

"'I — I  hadn't  seen  it  in  that  light,  sir,* 
108 


GREAT    DISCOVERIES 

he  said.  'But  what  am  I  to  do,  sir?  I  am 
heavily  indebted  to  my  tailor.' 

'"What!  Haven't  you  paid  for  those 
lovely  garments?' 

11  'I  had  them  charged,  sir,'  Cub  sadly 
answered.  'My  mother  sent  me  a  hundred 
dollars  to  pay  for  them,  but  I  loaned  it  to 
Roger  Daniels.  I  should  be  much  obliged, 
sir,  if  you  would  collect  it  for  me.' 

"I  went  to  Roger  and  made  him  pay  the 
debt.  He  paid  it  in  a  curious  way — by  go 
ing  to  his  tailor  and  buying  a  hundred 
dollars'  worth  of  clothes  for  Cub  and  hav 
ing  them  charged.  It  was  compounding 
a  felony,  but  my  client  was  satisfied  and 
Roger  was  grateful.  He  began  to  have  some 
regard  for  me.  Not  every  lawyer  had  been 
able  to  make  him  pay.  Within  a  day  or 
so  he  came  to  consult  me  about  a  mortgage 
on  his  patrimony. 

"  Roger  had  married  and  settled  down 
immediately  after  his  remarkable  cruise. 
He  had  kept  his  party  in  ignorance  of  his 
109 


-CHARGE    IT" 

financial  troubles  and  returned  with  his  repu 
tation  as  an  aristocrat  firmly  established. 
The  gay  young  Bessie  Runnymede  had 
accepted  him  at  once.  He  had  become 
junior  partner  in  a  firm  of  brokers  and  had 
rented  a  handsome  residence  in  Pointview. 

"So  they  began  their  little  play  with 
ladies,  lords,  and  gentlemen  in  the  cast,  and 
with  a  country-house,  a  tandem,  a  crested 
limousine,  and  a  racing  launch  for  scenery. 
But  Roger  had  what  is  known  as  a  bad 
season.  Well,  you  know,  the  moving-pic 
ture  shows  had  got  such  a  hold  on  the 
public. 

"At  first  we  concluded  that  he  must 
have  made  another  lucky  play  in  the  market. 
Then,  after  six  months  or  so,  bills  against 
Roger  began  to  arrive  for  collection  from 
sundry  department  stores  in  the  city.  He 
was  a  good  fellow  and  had  plausible  excuses, 
and  I  declined  to  press  payment  and  re 
turned  the  bills. 

"One  day,  some  eight  months  after  the 
no 


GREAT    DISCOVERIES 

wedding,  an  urgent  telegram  from  Roger 
brought  me  to  New  York.  I  found  the 
young  man  in  his  office,  with  his  wife  at  his 
side.  They  were  both  in  tears.  I  sat  down 
with  them,  and  he  told  me  this  story : 

'"The  fact  is,  I'm  a  thief,'  he  began. 
(I  have  confessed  the  truth  to  my  partners. 
Since  my  marriage  I  have  taken  about 
twenty  thousand  dollars — needed  every 
cent  of  it  to  keep  going.  The  fact  is,  I 
expected  to  make  a  killing  in  the  market 
and  return  the  money — had  inside  informa 
tion — but  everything  went  wrong.  Yester 
day  I  was  cleaned  out. 

"I  went  home  late  in  the  evening.  I 
hoped  that  my  wife  would  be  in  bed,  but 
she  was  waiting  for  me.  She  said  that 
I  looked  sick,  and  wanted  to  know  what  was 
the  matter.  I  told  her  that  I  had  a  head 
ache,  and  got  into  bed  as  soon  as  possible; 
but  I  couldn't  sleep.  Long  after  midnight 
my  wife  rose  and  turned  on  the  light  and 
came  to  my  bed  and  said  that  she  knew  I 
in 


"CHARGE    IT" 

was  troubled  about  something — that  she 
had  seen  it  in  my  face  for  weeks.  She 
begged  that  I  would  let  her  help  me  bear  it. 
Then  I  told  her  the  truth,  and  discovered — 
for  I  didn't  know  her  before — one  of  the 
noblest  women  in  the  world.  She  hid  her 
face  in  the  pillow,  and  then  I  had  a  bad 
moment. 

' ' '  '  'Why  did  you  do  it  ?' '  she  asked  as  soon 
as  she  could  speak. 

'"And  I  said:  "We've  been  foolish- 
trying  to  keep  up  with  Harry  and  the  rest 
of  them.  It  was  my  fault.  I  ought  to 
have  told  you  that  I  couldn't  go  the 
pace." 

"  'She  saw  the  truth  in  a  flash,  and  the 
old-fashioned  woman  in  her  got  to  work. 

"'"Roger,  get  up  and  dress  yourself," 
said  she.  ' '  We  will  go  and  see  your  partners 
to-night.  We  will  go  together,  for  I  am  as 
guilty  as  you.  We  will  tell  them  the  truth 
and  beg  for  time.  Maybe  we  can  get  the 
money." 

112 


GREAT    DISCOVERIES 

"'We  started  in  our  motor-car  about  one 
o'clock  for  the  city,  on  dark  and  muddy 
roads.  Some  ten  miles  out  we  broke  an 
axle  and  left  car  and  driver  and  went  on 
afoot.  My  wife  wouldn't  wait.  No  trains 
were  running.  But  we  could  get  a  trolley 
five  miles  down  the  road.  So  we  went  on 
in  the  dark  and  silence.  I  put  my  arm 
around  her,  and  not  a  word  passed  between 
us  for  an  hour  or  so.  I  don't  know  what  she 
was  thinking  of,  but  I  was  trying  to  count 
my  follies.  It  began  to  rain,  and  I  felt 
sorry  for  Bess,  and  took  off  my  coat  and 
threw  it  over  her/ 

11  "'I  don't  mind  the  rain,"  she  said.  "It 
will  cool  me." 

"We  were  a  sight  when  we  got  to  the 
trolley,  and  just  before  daylight  we  rang 
the  bell  of  the  senior  partner.  Our  weariness 
and  muddy  shoes  and  rain-soaked  garments 
were  a  help  to  us.  They  touched  his  heart, 
sir.  Anyhow,  he  gave  me  a  week  of  grace 
in  which  to  make  good.  I  must  get  the 


"CHARGE    IT'1 

money  somehow,  and  I  want  your  advice 
about  it.' 

"Tm  glad  of  one  part  of  it  all,'  I  said— 
'that  you  have  discovered  each  other  and 
learned  that  you  are  human  beings  of  a 
pretty  good  sort.  I've  much  more  respect 
for  both  of  you  than  I  ever  had  before.' 

"He  looked  at  me  in  surprise. 

"Oh,  you  are  a  better  man  than  you  were 
three  months  ago!  I  answered  him.  'You 
happen  to  have  run  against  the  law,  and  it's 
shocked  and  frightened  you.  But  you  are 
improving.  Long  ago  you  began  to  incur 
debts  which  you  couldn't  pay,  and  you  must 
have  known  that  you  couldn't  pay  them. 
In  that  manner  you  became  possessed  of 
a  large  sum  of  money  belonging  to  other 
people.  It  was  used  not  for  necessities, 
but  to  maintain  a  foolish  display.  That  is 
the  most  heartless  kind  of  fraud.  I've 
much  more  respect  for  you  now  that  you 
see  your  fault  and  confess  it.  I'm  con 
vinced  now  that  you  have  a  conscience, 
114 


GREAT    DISCOVERIES 

and  that  you  will  be  likely  to  make  some  use 
of  it  in  the  future.  I'm  particularly  grate 
ful  to  your  wife.  She  has  shown  me  that 
she  is  just  a  woman,  and  not  an  angel.  I 
don't  believe  that  it  was  at  all  necessary  for 
you  to  have  groveled  in  aristocratic  crimes 
in  order  to  win  her  heart.  The  yacht  cruise 
and  the  tandem  and  the  violets  and  the 
Fifth  Avenue  clothes  and  the  ton  of  candy 
were  quite  superfluous.  You  needed  only 
to  tell  her  the  truth,  like  a  man,  and  say 
that  you  loved  her.1 

"'It  is  true,  Roger,'  said  the  girl  as  she 
broke  down  again. 

"'I  did  it  all  to  please  you,  dear/  the  boy 
answered,  in  his  effort  to  comfort  her. 

"  'And  it  did  please  me,'  she  said,  broken 
ly,  'but  I  know  that  I  should  have  been 
better  pleased  if — ' 

"She  hesitated,  and  I  expressed  her 
thought  for  her: 

"'If  he  had  centralized  on  manhood. 
There  is  something  sweeter  than  violets 


"CHARGE    IT" 

and  grander  than  fine  raiment  in  a  sort  of 
character  that  a  boy  should  offer  to  the 
girl  he  loves.' 

"They  were  both  convinced.  It  was 
easy  to  see  that  now,  and  I  promised  to  do 
what  I  could  for  them. 

"I  got  a  schedule  of  the  young  man's 
debts  and  found  that  he  owed,  among  other 
debts,  six  thousand  dollars  to  sundry  shops 
and  department  stores  in  New  York — 
the  purchases  of  his  wife  in  the  eight  months 
of  their  wedded  life.  I  asked  her  how  it 
could  have  happened. 

' '  He  opened  accounts  for  me  and  said 
I  could  buy  what  I  wanted,  and  you  know 
it  is  so  easy  to  say  " Charge  it,'"  was  her 
answer.  'Every  one  has  accounts  these 
days,  and  they  tempt  you  to  buy  more 
than  you  need.' 

'"It  is  true.     Credit  is  the  latest  ally  of 

the  devil.     It  is  the  great  tempter.     It  is 

responsible   for   half   the   extravagance   of 

modern  life.     The  two  words   'charge  it' 

116 


GREAT    DISCOVERIES 

have  done  more  harm  than  any  others  in 
the  language.  They  have  led  to  a  vast 
amount  of  unnecessary  buying.  They  have 
developed  a  talent  for  extravagance  in  our 
people.  They  have  created  a  large  and 
growing  sisterhood  and  brotherhood  of 
dead-beats.  They  have  led  to  bankruptcy 
and  slow  pay  and  bad  debts.  They  have 
raised  the  cost  of  everything  we  require 
because  the  tradesman  compels  us  to  pay 
his  uncollected  accounts.  They  are  added 
to  your  bills  and  mine,  and  the  merchant 
prince  suffers  no  impairment  of  his  fortune. 

"Bessie's  bank-account  was  also  over 
drawn.  That  reminds  me  of  a  new  sinner 
— the  bank-check.  It  is  so  easy  to  draw  a 
check — and,  then,  somehow,  it's  only  a  piece 
of  paper.  You  let  it  go  without  a  pang  while 
you  would  be  very  thoughtful  if  you  were 
counting  out  the  money  and  parting  with  it. 

"The  check  is  another  way  of  saying 
' Charge  it.' 

"That  evening  I  went  to  see  Harry." 

9  117 


XII 

IN    WHICH    HARRY    IS    FORCED    TO    ABANDON 
SWAMP      FICTION      AND      LIKE      FOLLIES 
AND     TO     STUDY     THE     GEOGRAPHY 
AND    NATIVES    OF    A    LAND    UN 
KNOWN     TO     OUR     HEIRIS- 
TOCRACY 

"T  FOUND     Harry    smoking    with    Cub 

1  Sayles  in  his  den  above  stairs  in  the  big 
country-house  of  Henry  Delance.  As  I 
entered  Harry  said  to  his  young  friend: 

'"I  have  to  talk  over  some  things  with 
Mr.  Potter — would  you  mind  going  down 
to  the  library?' 

"Cub  withdrew,  and  Harry  sat  down  with 
me. 

'"I  suppose  you've  seen  him?'  he  asked, 
nervously. 

118 


HARRY'S    STUDIES 

"'Whom?' 

'"Why,  you  know  a  mysterious  stranger 
has  been  looking  for  me  and — by  Jove! — 
I'm  scared  stiff.  He's  an  Englishman.' 

"'What  of  that?' 

"Let  me  show  you,'  said  Harry. 

' '  He  took  a  key  from  his  pocket,  unlocked 
a  door,  and  fetched  the  familiar  skull  of 
the  Bishop  of  St.  Clare  and  put  it  on  the 
table  before  me. 

"It's  that  damn  Bishop's  head,'  he  whis 
pered.  'It  has  come  back — would  you 
believe  it? — picked  up  by  a  fisherman  on 
the  Irish  coast  and  returned  to  the  express 
office  in  London.  All  the  old  directions 
were  quite  legible  on  the  box.  "To  Harry 
Delance,  SS.  Lusitania.  If  not  found,  for 
ward  to  Pointview,  Conn.,  U.S.A.,  charges 
collect!"  So  it  came  on.  I  received  a 
notice  and  went  down  and  got  it  out  of 
bond  and  paid  three  pounds,  and  here  it  is.' 

"It  looks  as  if  the  Bishop  was  out  for 
revenge,'  I  said,  with  a  laugh. 
119 


"CHARGE    IT' 

"He's  got  on  my  nerves  and  my  con 
science,'  said  Harry.  'By  Jove!  he  haunts 
me.  When  I  heard  of  this  mysterious 
Englishman  to-day  I  got  a  chill.' 

"You  go  buy  yourself  a  small  shovel 
and  a  pocket  light  to-morrow,'  I  suggested, 
and  at  night  go  back  in  the  hills  with  the 
Bishop's  head  and  bury  it.' 

"'And  if  I  get  into  trouble  I  want  you 
to  take  care  of  me.' 

"I  made  no  answer.  It  didn't  seem 
necessary,  but  I  said:  'There's  another 
matter  of  which  I  have  come  to  talk  with 
you.  Our  friend  Roger  is  in  trouble.' 

"I  told  him  the  story  of  Roger's  down 
fall.  It  got  under  his  vest,  and  I  added: 
'Now,  Harry,  it's  up  to  you  to  indulge  in 
some  more  philanthropy.  You  ought  to 
help  him.' 

'"What— what  can  I  do?'  he  asked  in 
amazement. 

'"Lend  him  the  money — twenty  thou 
sand  dollars.     It  isn't  all  that  the  public 
1 20 


HARRY'S    STUDIES 

will  charge  against  you  on  Roger's  account, 
but  it  will  do.' 

"'Harry  sank  in  his  chair  and  threw  up 
his  hands  as  if  grasping  for  a  straw. 

" ' It's  my  whole  allowance  for  the  year,'  he 
said,  'and  I  couldn't  appeal  to  the  Governor.' 

'"Nevertheless  you  ought  to  do  it,  for 
Roger  told  me  that  it  was  your  pace  that 
brought  him  where  he  is.' 

"'What  an  ass!'  Harry  exclaimed,  and 
the  old  Bishop  seemed  to  indorse  his  view. 
'By  the  blue  beard  of  the  Caliph,  what  am 
I  to  do?' 

"'Pay  it,'  I  insisted. 

'"Pay  it  and  die,'  he  groaned.  'I  shall 
have  to  do  it  somehow,  but  this  kind  of 
thing  is  grinding  me.' 

"You  can  go  to  my  ranch  in  Wyoming 
and  live  on  nothing  for  six  months,'  I  said. 
'When  you  get  back  I'll  lend  you  enough 
to  tide  you  over! 

"Til  do  it,'  he  said,  as  if  it  were  the  very 
straw  he  had  been  reaching  for. 

121 


-CHARGE    IT' 

"Then  he  began  to  tell  me  of  other 
troubles.  Marie  had  been  decidedly  cool 
to  Harry  at  the  servants'  ball.  Then  he 
had  met  her  on  the  street,  and  she  had 
barely  noticed  him  and  hurried  away,  with 
the  young  Reverend  Robert  Knowles  at 
her  side.  Harry  was,  fortunately,  going 
slow,  but  he  had  received  internal  injuries 
and  was  suffering  from  shock. 

"'The  old  man  is  at  the  bottom  of  it,' 
I  explained.  'You  gave  him  a  dose  from 
the  wrong  bottle.  It  p'isoned  him.' 

"'By  Jove!  What  a  prude  he  is!'  said 
Harry.  'Upon  my  word  that  is  one  of  the 
noblest  books  I  ever  read — contains  a 
great  lesson,  don't  you  know?  It  takes 
you  straight  to  the  heights.' 

'"Too  straight,'  I  said.  'It  turns  out 
for  nothing.  It  crosses  a  morass  to  avoid 
going  around.  When  you  reach  the  high 
ground  you  are  covered  with  mud  and 
slime.  You  need  to  be  washed  and  dis 
infected,  and  perhaps  you've  caught  a 

122 


HARRY'S    STUDIES 

* 
fever  that  will  last  as  long  as  you  live. 

Many  a  boy  and  girl  have  got  mired  in 
this  swamp  fiction  that  you  enjoy  so  much. 
There  are  many  of  us  who  prefer  to  go 
around  the  swamp  and  keep  on  a  decent 
footing  even  if  it  takes  longer.' 

'"We  want  to  know  all  sides  of  life/  said 
Harry. 

"'And  would  you  care  to  see  the  girl 
you  loved  studying  life  in  a  brothel?' 

'"Well,  really,  you  know,  that's  different/ 
Harry  stammered. 

"But  the  fact  is,  her  feet  might  as  well 
be  in  a  brothel  as  her  brain,'  I  insisted. 
'She  might  shake  the  dust  from  her  feet. 
Harry,  there's  one  side  of  life  that  you 
ought  to  study  at  once — the  American  side. 
You've  neglected  the  Western  hemisphere 
in  your  studies.  When  can  you  start  for 
the  ranch?' 

"Day  after  to-morrow — if  you  like. 
This  place  is  a  dreadful  bore.' 

'"Good!  Ill  attend  to  the  tickets  to- 
123 


"CHARGE    IT" 

day.  The  cart,  drag,  and  horses  will  be 
all  the  better  for  a  vacation,  and  the  eyes  of 
the  people  are  in  need  of  rest/ 

'"The  whole  outfit  is  going  to  be  sold,' 
said  Harry.  'Idiots  and  the  hoi  polloi 
have  quite  ruined  the  sport  here.  The 
Governor  is  always  poking  fun  at  it,  you 
know,  and  it  has  made  me  so  weary!  One 
can't  stand  that  kind  of  thing  forever — 
can  he?  I  got  after  his  helmet,  battle-ax, 
and  family  tree,  by  Jove!  Our  crested 
chambermaids  and  bootblacks  have  been 
a  great  help  to  me.  What  a  noble  band  of 
philanthropists!  Father  and  I  have  made 
an  agreement.  He  is  going  to  chuck  the 
battle-ax  and  saw  the  royal  branches  off 
our  family  tree  and  I  am  going  to  sell  the 
drag,  cart,  and  horses.' 

'"That's  a  great  treaty,'  I  said.  'The 
settlement  of  the  Alaskan  frontier  is  not 
more  important  than  fixing  the  boundaries 
of  our  social  life.  Let  us  surrender  the  tools 
of  idiocy;  especially,  let  us  abandon  all 
124 


HARRY'S    STUDIES 

claim  to  the  helmet  and  battle-ax.  They're 
all  right  in  their  place,  but  they  aren't  ours. 
The  plowshare  and  the  pruning-hook  are 
our  symbols.' 

"'By  Jove!  you  know,  the  old  Bishop  of 
St.  Clare  agrees  with  you  exactly,'  said 
Harry.  'I've  been  reading  his  life  and 
writings,  which  I  picked  up  in  London, 
and  he's  about  converted  me  to  your  way  of 
thinking.  He  hated  "the  glittering  idle 
ness"  of  the  rich  and  put  industry  above 
elegance.' 

"'And  he  doesn't  intend  that  your 
education  shall  be  neglected — he's  looking 
after  you.' 

"He's  as  industrious  as  Destiny,'  said 
the  young  man.  '  Did  you  know  that  Cub 
Sayles  is  engaged?' 

"'To  whom?' 

' ' '  Mrs.  Revere-Chalmers. ' 

"'God  rest  his  soul!'  I  exclaimed. 

'"It's  just  the  thing  for  Cub,'  said 
Harry.  'He's  poor  but  presentable,  and 
125 


"CHARGE    IT" 

has  many  extravagant  tastes.  She's  quite 
a  bit  older  than  he,  of  course,  but  that  isn't 
unusual.' 

'"I  warned  him  long  ago,  knowing  that 
his  folly  would  undo  him.  Now  he  will  be 
a  captain  of  New  Thought,  King  of  the 
Flub  Dubs,  advertising  manager  of  the 
Psychological  Hair  Factory,  and  inspector 
of  pimples.' 

"'But  don't  you  know  that  he  will  have 
everything  that  he  desires?' 

"'Except  happiness.' 

"'Oh,  I  think  that  she  is  very  fond  of 
him!'  said  Harry.  'She  told  me  to-day 
that  he  is  the  only  man  she  ever  loved,  and 
the  dear  old  girl  thinks  that  she  won  him 
by  concentration.' 

"With  this  remark,  made  on  the  2oth  of 
May,  Harry  dropped  out  of  the  history  of 
Pointview  until  December." 


XIII 

IN    WHICH    THE    MINISTER    GETS    INTO    LOVE 
AND   TROUBLE 


resigned  his  place  in  my  office 
next  day,  and  confessed  his  purpose, 
and  I  heard  him  with  sober  respect  and 
tried  in  every  proper  way  to  save  him.  It 
wouldn't  work. 

"The  lines  of  panic  had  left  the  face  of 
Cub.  The  two-pound  expression  had  de 
parted  from  it.  The  faintness  of  chap 
erons  would  no  longer  imperil  his  comfort. 

"'A  hundred  and  four  pounds  of  candy 
and  twenty  suppers,  and  all  for  nothing  !' 
I  exclaimed.  'You  ruin  a  girl's  digestion 
and  chuck  her  over.  It  isn't  fair.' 

'"But,  sir,  I  found  that  I  didn't  love 
her,'  said  Cub. 

127 


"CHARGE    IT" 

'"What  a  waste  of  violets,  confectionery, 
and  crab-meat!' 

"'Yes,  sir,  in  a  way;  but  you  see  I  had 
to  have  my  training  in  society/  Cub  de 
clared. 

"What  was  the  use?  Cub  had  no  more 
humor  than  a  sewing-machine. 

"'The  wedding  day  drew  on  apace,  and 
just  before  its  arrival  a  notorious  weekly 
in  New  York  gave  the  lady  a  drubbing. 
Certain  circumstances  that  made  her  first 
marriage  unhappy  were  plainly  hinted  at. 
The  town  shuddered  with  amazement. 
Cub  stood  pat,  but  the  Episcopal  minister 
refused  to  marry  them.  The  Baptist  min 
ister  balked.  It  looked  like  a  postpone 
ment,  but  the  knot  was  tied,  on  schedule 
time,  by  the  Reverend  Robert  Knowles. 
That  made  no  end  of  talk,  and  a  small 
party  of  insurgents  left  his  church.  Deacon 
Benson  was  on  the  point  of  pulling  out,  and 
swore  so  much  about  it  that  I  advised  him 
to  hang  on  for  his  own  sake. 
128 


THE    MINISTER    IN    LOVE 

"'But  there  ain't  much  to  hang  on  to,' 
said  the  Deacon. 

'"Mrs.  Revere- Chalmers-Say les  held  a 
mortgage  on  the  property  of  the  Baptist 
Society  of  Pointview,  and  asked  me  to  fore 
close  it. 

'"I  have  another  mortgage  on  the  Con 
gregational  church,  and  they're  behind 
in  their  interest,  but  I'm  not  going  to  push 
them,'  she  said  to  me. 

"So  young  Mr.  Knowles  had  acted  from 
motives  of  business  prudence,  and  was  not 
much  at  fault.  The  old  church  had  ceased 
to  live  within  its  means  and  had  entered 
the  'charge  it'  van,  and  was  trying  to  serve 
two  masters. 

"Betsey  and  I  paid  both  mortgages  and 
threw  them  in  the  fire. 

"Young  Mr.  Knowles  came  to  see  us 
with  Marie,  and  brought  the  thanks  of  the 
parish.  They  were  a  good-looking  couple. 

"This  minister  of  the  First  Congre 
gational  Church  of  Pointview  now  aspired 
129 


"CHARGE    IT' 

to  be  the  prime  minister  of  its  first  heiress. 
Their  acquaintance,  which  had  begun  in 
the  arrangements  for  the  servants'  ball, 
had  grown  in  warmth  and  intimacy  as  soon 
as  Harry  had  gone.  Robert  began  to  take 
after  Marie,  with  muffler  open  and  all  the 
gas  on.  He  was  a  swell  of  a  parson — utterly 
damned  with  good-fortune.  Had  an  in 
come  from  the  estate  of  his  father,  a  call 
from  on  high,  a  crest  from  Charlemagne, 
diplomas  from  college  and  the  seminary,  a 
fine  figure,  red  cheeks,  and  'heavenly  eyes.' 
As  to  his  fatal  gift  of  beauty,  the  young 
ladies  were  of  one  mind.  They  agreed, 
also,  about  the  cut  of  his  garments,  that 
were  changed  several  times  a  day. 

"A  dashing,  masculine,  head-punching 
spirit  might  have  saved  him  with  all  his 
ballast,  but  he  didn't  have  it.  The  Rev 
erend  Robert  was  a  good  fellow  to  every 
body — a  fairly  sound-hearted,  decent,  hand 
some  fellow,  but  not  a  man.  To  be  that, 
one  has  to  know  things  at  first  hand — 
130 


THE    MINISTER    IN    LOVE 

especially  work  and  trouble.  He  was  a 
second-hand,  school-made  thinker.  His  doc 
trines  came  out  of  the  books,  but  his  con 
duct  was  mildly  modern.  He  danced  and 
smoked  a  little,  and  played  bridge  and  golf, 
and  made  his  visits  in  a  handsome  motor 
car. 

''Marie  liked  the  young  man,  and  she 
and  her  mother  rode  and  tramped  about 
with  him  almost  every  day  of  that  summer. 
Deacon  Joe  showed  signs  of  faintness  when 
he  spoke  of  him. 

1  'One  day  I  went  up  to  the  Benson  home 
stead  and  found  the  old  man  sitting  on  his 
piazza  alone. 

'"Where's  Marie?'  I  asked. 

'"Off  knocking  around  with  the  minister/ 
said  Deacon  Joe,  in  a  voice  frail  with  con 
tempt. 

"'She  might  be  in  worse  company,' 
I  suggested. 

"'Maybe,'  he  snapped. 

'"What's  the  matter  with  the  minister?' 


"CHARGE    IT" 

"' Nothing,'  said  the  old  man,  with  a 
chuckle.  '  He's  a  complete  gentleman,  com 
plete!  So  plaguy  beautiful  that  he's  a  kind 
of  a  girl's  plaything.  He  couldn't  milk  a 
cow  or  dig  a  hill  o'  potatoes.  Acts  kind  o' 
faint  an'  sickly  to  me.' 

"The  Deacon  thoughtfully  stirred  the 
roots  of  his  beard  with  the  fingers  of  his 
right  hand,  and  went  on  with  a  squint  and 
a  feeble  tone  which  he  seemed  to  think 
best  suited  to  his  subject. 

"'Talks  so  low  you  can  hardly  hear  him. 
I  have  to  set  with  my  hand  to  my  ear  every 
Sunday  to  make  out  what  he's  sayin', 
an'  he  prays  as  if  he  had  the  lung  fever. 
Talks  o'  hell  as  though  it  was  a  quart  o' 
cold  molasses.  That's  one  reason  we  ain't 
no  respect  for  it  in  this  community.  Ay — 
'es!  That's  the  reason.' 

"He  squinted  his  face  thoughtfully  and 
resumed  with  more  energy. 

"'I  like  to  hear  a  man  get  up  on  his 
hind  legs  and  holler  as  they  used  to — by 
132 


THE    MINISTER    IN    LOVE 

gravy!  Ye  can't  scare  anybody  by  whis 
pers.  Damn  it,  sir,  what  we  need  is  an 
old-fashioned  revival.* 

"The  Deacon  halted  to  take  a  chew  of 
tobacco,  and  went  on,  with  a  sorrowful 
calmness : 

"'Now  this  young  feller  don't  want  to 
give  no  credit  to  God — not  a  bit — no,  sir! 
Science  has  done  everything.  I've  noticed 
it  time  an'  ag'in.  T'other  Sunday  he  said 
that  an  angel  spoke  to  Moses,  an'  the  Bible 
says,  as  plain  as  A  B  C,  that  God  spoke  to 
him.  How  can  he  expect  that  God  is 
going  to  bless  his  ministry,  an'  he  never 
givin'  Him  any  credit?' 

"'It's  rather  bad  politics,  anyhow/  I 
said. 

"An'  the  church  is  goin'  from  bad  to 
worse,'  he  complained.  'The  average  at 
tendance  is  about  forty-seven,  an'  it  used  to 
be  between  five  an'  six  hundred,  an'  we 
are  all  taxed  to  death  to  keep  it  goin'.  I 
have  to  pay  three  hundred  a  year  for  the 

10  133 


"CHARGE    IT'1 

privilege  o'  git  tin'  mad  every  Sunday. 
Two  or  three  of  us  have  got  after  him  an' 
made  him  promise  to  do  better.  Some 
awful  free-minded  folks  have  crept  into 
the  church,  an*  the  fact  is,  we  need  their 
money/  Deacon  Joe  went  on.  'What  the 
minister  ought  to  do  is  stick  to  the  old 
doctrines  that  are  safe  an'  sound.  'St'id  o' 
that  he's  tryin'  to  sail  'twixt  rock  an'  reef.' 

"'Between  Scylla  and  Charybdis,'  I 
suggested. 

"Between  Silly  an'  what?'  the  old  man 
asked,  as  if  in  doubt  of  my  meaning. 

"We  were  interrupted  by  the  arrival 
of  the  Reverend  Robert  with  Marie  and  her 
mother,  in  his  handsome  landaulet.  Marie 
asked  me  to  go  with  her  to  gather  wild 
flowers  in  a  bit  of  woodland  not  far  away. 
I  went,  and  soon  saw  her  purpose.  She 
had  had  the  'jolliest,  cutest  letter  from 
Harry'  that  she  had  ever  read,  and  seemed 
to  be  in  doubt  as  to  whether  she  ought  to 
let  him  write  to  her. 


THE    MINISTER    IN    LOVE 

'"Has  your  grandfather  forbidden  it?' 
I  asked. 


'"Then  it's  up  to  you,'  I  said. 
"Do  you  think  he  cares  for  me?' 

'"I  should  think  him  a  fool  if  he  didn't,' 
I  said,  looking  down  into  her  lovely  dark 
eyes. 

'"But  do  you  really  and  truly  think  that 
he  cares  for  me?'  she  insisted. 

"I  suspect  that  he  does.' 

"'Why?' 

'"A  lawyer  must  not  betray  a  con 
fidence.' 

'"Do  you  like  him?' 

"Wait  until  his  uneducation  is  com 
pleted,  and  I'll  tell  you.  I  am  beginning  to 
have  hope  for  Harry.' 

'"I'm  sorry  grandpapa  is  so  hateful!' 
she  exclaimed,  with  a  sigh. 

"I  stood  up  for  the  old  man  and  asked: 

'"Do  you  like  the  Reverend  Robert?' 

"Very   much!     He's    so   good   looking, 


-CHARGE    IT" 

and  has  such  beautiful  thoughts!  Have 
you  heard  him  preach?' 

"'No.' 

" '  We  think  his  sermons  are  fine.  Every 
body  likes  them  but  grandpapa.  He  wants 
noise,  you  know — lung  power  and  old 
theology.  I  hate  it!' 

"'He  doesn't  take  to  Robert?' 

"'No;  he  calls  him  a  calf.  Nobody  is 
good  enough  for  me,  you  know.  He'd  like 
me  to  marry  some  man  with  a  hoe,  who 
would  take  me  to  church  and  Sunday- 
school  every  sabbath  morning,  and  for  a 
walk  to  the  cemetery  in  the  afternoon,  and 
down  to  the  prayer-meeting  every  Wednes 
day  night,  and  on  a  journey  from  Genesis 
to  Revelations  once  a  year.  It's  too  much 
to  expect  of  a  human  being.  Then  the 
hoes  are  in  the  hands  of  Poles,  Slavs,  and 
Italians.  So  what  am  I  to  do  ?' 

"'Well,  you  are  young — you  can  afford 
to  wait  a  while,'  I  said. 

"  'But  not  until  I  am  old  and  all  withered 
136 


THE    MINISTER    IN    LOVE 

up.  I  am  going  to  marry  the  man  I  love 
within  a  year  or  so,  if  he  has  the  good  sense 
to  ask  me.  Don't  you  ever  go  to  church?' 

"'No/  I  said. 

"'Why  not?' 

"I  tried  to  think.  There  were  the 
ministers — two  boys  and  three  old  men — 
dried  beef  and  veal !  Not  to  my  knowledge 
had  a  single  one  of  them  ever  expressed  an 
idea.  They  were  seen,  but  not  felt.  The 
Church!  Why,  certainly,  it  was  founded 
on  the  sweetness,  strength,  and  sanity  of 
a  great  soul.  I  had  almost  forgotten  that. 
It  had  grown  feeble.  It  had  got  its  for 
tunes  entangled  in  psychological  hair.  It 
should  have  been  correcting  the  follies  of 
the  people — their  selfishness,  their  sinful 
pride,  their  extravagance,  their  loss  of  honor 
and  humanity.  Had  I  not  seen,  in  the  case 
of  Harry  and  his  followers,  how  the  Church 
had  failed  in  its  work?  Ought  it  not  to 
have  sought  and  saved  them  long  ago — 
saved  them  from  needless  disaster?  It 


"CHARGE    IT" 

should  have  been  appealing  to  their  con 
sciences.  If  appeals  had  failed  it  should 
have  stung  them  with  ridicule  or  raised 
a  voice  like  that  of  Christ  against  the 
Pharisees.  The  Church !  Why,  it  was  living, 
not  in  the  present,  but  in  the  past.  Here 
in  Pointview  the  Church  itself  had  become 
one  of  the  greatest  follies  of  the  time. 

"I  want  you  to  go  next  Sunday  and  hear 
Mr.  Knowles,  as  a  favor  to  me — won't 
you?'  Marie  asked. 

' ' '  Yes, '  I  said.  '  In  the  next  five  Sundays 
I  shall  go  to  every  Protestant  church  in 
Pointview.  I  want  to  know  what  they're 
doing.  I  shairput  aside  my  scruples  and 
go.'" 


XIV 

IN     WHICH     SOCRATES     DISCOVERS     A     NEW 
FOLLY 

""1  X  TELL,  I  went  and  saw  the  Reverend 
VV  Robert  Knowles  sail  between  'Silly 
and  Charybdis.'  He  bumped  on  both 
sides,  but  did  it  rather  gracefully.  He  re 
viewed  the  career  of  Samuel,  who  lived  and 
died  some  thousands  of  years  ago.  The 
miraculous  touch  of  Carlyle  or  Macaulay 
might  easily  have  failed  in  the  task  of  re 
viving  a  man  so  thoroughly  dead.  But 
the  Reverend  Robert  entered  this  unequal 
contest  with  no  evidence  of  alarm.  The 
dead  man  prevailed.  The  power  of  his  long 
sleep  fell  upon  us.  My  head  grew  heavy. 
I  felt  my  weight  bearing  down  upon  the 
cushions.  A  stiffness  came  into  my  bones. 


-CHARGE    IT' 

"On  our  way  to  church  Betsey  had 
placed  the  young  minister  in  my  thoughts. 
The  trustees  had  reckoned  that  he  would 
revive  the  interest  of  the  young  people  in 
Sunday  worship;  and  he  did,  but  it  was 
the  worship  of  youth  and  beauty. 

"Well,  the  other  churches  were  emptier 
than  ever,  and  so  the  spiritual  life  of  the 
community  was  in  no  way  improved.  In 
fact,  I  guess  it  had  been  a  little  embittered 
by  the  new  conditions.  As  soon  as  it  be 
came  known  that  Marie  had  won  the  prize 
of  his  favor  the  other  girls  had  returned  to 
their  native  altars,  having  discovered  that 
the  new  minister  was  vain,  worldly,  and 
conceited. 

"Lettie  Davis,  who  had  made  a  dead  set 
at  him,  had  been  strongly  convinced  of 
that  as  soon  as  he  began  to  show  a  pref 
erence  for  Marie,  and  the  Davis  family 
had  left  the  church  and  gone  over  to  the 
Methodists.  The  young  man  had  been 
filled  with  alarm.  He  feared  it  would 
140 


A    NEW    FOLLY 

wreck  the  church.  That  old  ship  of  the 
faith  was  leaky  and  iron -sick,  and  down 
by  the  head  and  heel,  as  they  say  at  sea. 
She  rolled  if  one  got  off  or  on  her. 

"Such  was  the  condition  of  things  when 
we  entered  the  church  of  my  fathers.  We 
sat  down  in  the  Potter  pew  a  few  minutes 
before  the  service  began.  There  were,  by 
actual  count,  forty -nine  people  gathered 
around  the  altar  of  the  old  church,  and  be 
hind  us  a  great  emptiness  and  the  ghosts 
of  the  dead.  In  my  boyhood  I  had  sat 
in  its  dim  light,  with  six  hundred  people 
filling  every  seat  to  the  doors  and  a  man  of 
power  and  learning  in  the  pulpit. 

"Faces  long  forgotten  were  there  in  those 
pews — old  faces,  young  faces.  How  many 
thousands  had  left  its  altar  to  find  distant 
homes  or  to  go  on  their  last  journey  to  that 
nearer  one  in  the  churchyard!  My  heart 
was  full  and  ready  for  strong  meat,  but  none 
came  to  me.  The  moment  of  silence  had 
been  something  rare — like  an  old  Grecian 
141 


-CHARGE    IT" 

vase  wonderfully  wrought.  Then,  sud 
denly,  the  singing  fell  upon  us  and  broke 
the  silence  into  ruins.  It  was  in  the  nature 
of  a  breach  of  the  peace.  There  are  two 
kinds  of  people  who  ought  to  be  gently  but 
firmly  restrained:  the  person  that  talks  too 
much  and  the  person  that  sings  too  much. 

"This  young  minister  undoubtedly  meant 
well.  He's  about  the  kind  of  a  chap  that 
I've  seen  in  law-offices  working  for  fifteen 
dollars  a  week — industrious,  zealous,  and 
able  up  to  a  point,  and  all  right  under 
supervision.  He  can  be  trusted  to  handle 
a  small  case  with  intelligence  and  judg 
ment.  But  I  wouldn't  go  to  him  for  in 
struction  in  philosophy;  and  if  I  wished  to 
relay  the  foundation  of  my  life  I  should, 
naturally,  consult  some  other  person.  As 
one  might  expect,  he  had  searched  the  cellars 
of  theology  for  canned  goods,  and  with 
extraordinary  success. 

"The  young  man  had  so  lately  arrived 
in  this  world  he  couldn't  be  expected  to 
142 


A    NEW    FOLLY 

know  much  about  its  affairs,  and  especially 
about  those  of  Samuel.  It  was  graceful 
and  decorous  elocution.  The  Deacon  ex 
pressed  his  opinion  of  it  in  snores,  and  I 
longed  to  follow  suit. 

"The  sermon  ended  with  a  dramatic 
recitation,  and  on  our  way  out  the  minister 
met  us  at  the  door. 

"  'You  must  manage  to  keep  these  people 
awake,'  I  suggested  to  him. 

'"How  am  I  to  do  it?'  he  asked. 

'"Well,  you  might  have  a  corps  of  pin- 
stickers  carefully  distributed  in  the  pews, 
or  you  could  put  the  pins  in  your  sermon. 
I  recommend  the  latter.' 

"We  went  away  with  a  sense  of  in 
jury. 

"'Let's  keep  trying,'  said  Betsey,  'until 
you  find  some  one  you  would  care  to  hear. 
I  would  feel  at  home  in  any  of  our  churches. 
These  days  there's  no  essential  difference  be 
tween  Congregationalists,  Baptists,  Meth 
odists,  Presbyterians,  and  Episcopalians. 


"CHARGE    IT' 

I've  talked  with  all  of  them,  and  their  dif 
ferences  are  dead  and  gone.  They  stand 
in  the  printed  creeds,  but  are  no  longer  in 
the  hearts  of  the  people.' 

"'Then  why  all  these  empty  churches?' 
I  asked.  'Why  don't  the  people  get  to 
gether  in  one  great  church?' 

"'Don't  talk  about  the  millennium/ 
said  Betsey.  'We  must  try  to  make  the 
best  of  what  we  have.' 

"Well,  in  the  next  four  Sundays  we  went 
from  church  to  church  to  get  strength  for 
our  souls,  and  found  only  weakness  and  dis 
appointment.  Immune  from  ridicule  and 
satire,  the  sacred  inefficiency  of  our  pulpit 
had  waxed  and  grown  and  taken  possession 
of  the  churches.  And  one  thought  came  to 
me  as  I  listened.  There  should  be  a  num 
ber  of  exits  to  every  Christian  church, 
plainly  marked:  'To  be  used  in  case  of  fire.' 
Ancient  history,  dead  philosophy,  sophomoric 
periods,  bad  music,  empty  pews,  weary 
groups  of  the  faithful  longing  for  home, 


A    NEW    FOLLY 

were,  in  brief,  the  things  that  we  saw  and 
heard.  It  was  pathetic. 

"I  began  to  think  about  it.  Here  were 
five  church  organizations,  all  weak,  infirm, 
begging,  struggling  for  life.  The  automo 
bile  and  the  golf  and  yacht  clubs  had 
nearly  finished  the  work  of  destruction 
which  incompetence  had  so  ably  begun. 
There  was  not  much  left  of  them;  yet  their 
combined  property  was  worth  about  one 
hundred  thousand  dollars.  They  spent  in 
the  aggregate  fifty-six  hundred  dollars  for 
ministers'  salaries,  and  their  total  average 
attendance  was  only  four  hundred  and  forty- 
nine.  I  could  see  no  more  extravagant 
waste  of  time,  work,  and  capital  in  any 
other  branch  of  human  effort.  Some  would 
call  it  wicked,  but,  though  we  speak  with  the 
tongues  of  men  and  of  angels,  and  have  not 
charity,  we  had  better  have  kept  still. 

"The  Reverend  Mr.  Knowles  came  to 
me  within  a  day  or  two  and  apologized 
for  his  sermon.  He  complained  that  he 
US 


"CHARGE    IT' 

couldn't  be  himself — that  he  didn't  dare 
speak  his  thoughts. 

'"Whose  thoughts  do  you  speak?'  I 
asked. 

'"Well,  I  trail  along  in  the  wake  of  the 
fathers.' 

"'Then  you  are  feeding  your  flock  on 
corned  and  kippered  thoughts — on  the  dried 
and  dug-up  convictions  of  the  dead.  It  isn't 
fair.  It  isn't  even  honest.  The  church 
here  is  dying  of  anemia  for  want  of  fresh 
food.  The  new  world  must  have  new 
thought  to  fit  new  conditions.  Its  outlook 
has  been  utterly  changed.  If  a  man  who 
had  never  seen  a  locomotive  or  a  motor 
car  or  a  tandem  or  a  telephone  or  an 
electric  light  or  the  sons  and  daughters  of  a 
new  millionaire  or  the  home  and  crest  of 
the  same  or  a  bill  of  a  modern  merchant 
were  to  come  down  out  of  the  backwoods 
and  try  to  tell  us  how  to  run  the  world,  we 
should  think  him  an  ass,  and  wisely.  Con 
sider  how  these  things  have  changed  the 
146 


A    NEW    FOLLY 

spirit  of  man  and  surrounded  it  with  new 
perils.' 

'  'But  think  of  the  old  fellows — the  moss- 
backs — who  hate  your  new  philosophy/ 
said  the  minister. 

'"And  think  of  the  young  fellows  who  are 
so  easily  tossed  about.  The  moss  of  senility 
is  covering  the  bloom  of  youth  and  the 
honor  of  youth.' " 


XV 


IN    WHICH    HARRY    RETURNS    TO    POINTVIEW 
AND   GOES   TO   WORK 

"DETSEY  and  I  were  giving  a  dinner- 
•1— '  party  at  our  house.  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Henry  Delance  and  the  Warburtons  and 
Dan  and  Lizzie  had  come  over  to  discuss 
a  plan  for  the  correction  of  the  greatest 
folly  and  extravagance  in  the  village — 
namely,  the  waste  of  its  spiritual  energy. 

"At  first  we  had  to  discuss  a  fact  related 
to  another  folly,  for  the  Delances  told  how 
Harry's  pet  collie  had  come  up  to  the  back 
door  that  day  with  a  human  skull  in  his 
mouth.  Of  course  I  knew  that  Harry's 
Bishop  had  returned,  but  held  my  peace 
about  it.  To  them  it  had  suggested  murder, 
and  they  had  consulted  the  chief  of  police. 
148 


HARRY'S     PET    COLLIE     HAD     COME     UP    TO    THE     BACK     DOOR 

WITH      A      HUMAN     ?;  K I  1 1    I        IN      MIQ      MOIITU-- 


HARRY   RETURNS  TO   POINTVIEW 

'  *  *  How  do  you  know  that  it  is  not  one  of 
your  ancestors  dug  up  in  a  back  pasture,' 
I  said. 

'"It  might  be  William  the  Conqueror,' 
Lizzie  remarked. 

'"I  deny  it,'  said  Delance,  in  perfect 
good  nature.  'We  have  resigned  from 
William's  family.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I 
never  joined  it.' 

"I  congratulated  him. 

'"It  has  always  seemed  like  the  merest 
poppycock  to  me — this  genealogical  craze 
of  the  ladies,'  said  Henry.  'When  our 
London  solicitor  wrote  that  it  would  take 
another  hundred  pounds  to  establish  the 
connection  beyond  a  doubt,  he  gave  away 
the  whole  scheme,  and  I  resigned.  It  was 
too  siily.  In  these  days  of  titled  chamber 
maids  I  think  we  shall  worry  along  pretty 
well  without  William.' 

''Then  Betsey  said:  'I  was  reading  in 
the  county  history  to-day  that  old  Zebulon 
Delance,  who  was  killed  in  a  fight  with 


"CHARGE    IT 

Indians  in  1750,  was  buried  in  a  meadow 
back  of  his  house.* 

' '  'It  may  be  the  skull  of  old  Zeb, '  said  Henry. 

"  'Now  there's  an  ancestor  worth  having,* 
I  suggested. 

"I  wonder  if  it  can  belong  to  old  Zeb,' 
Henry  mused. 

"At  last  we  got  to  my  plan.  I  pictured 
the  condition  of  the  community  as  I  saw 
it,  and  the  inefficiency  of  the  church  and  the 
need  of  a  new  and  active  power  in  Pointview. 

"I  proposed  that  we  buy  the  old  skating- 
rink  and  remodel  it,  employ  the  best  talent 
in  America,  and  start  a  new  center  of  power 
in  the  community — a  power  that  should, 
first  of  all,  keep  us  sane,  and  then  as  decent 
as  possible.  The  mathematics  of  the  en 
terprise  were  at  my  fingers'  ends: 

"Initial  Expenses $15,000 

%    * '  Annual  Outlay  for  Instruction      8,000 

"For  Music 3, 500 

"For   Maintenance 1,000 

"For  Management 3>5o° 

150 


HARRY   RETURNS   TO   POINTVIEW 

"It  was  no  small  matter,  but  the  initial  ex 
pense  and  the  first  year's  outlay  were  sub 
scribed  in  ten  minutes.  Betsey  set  the  ball  roll 
ing  with  an  offer  of  ten  thousand  dollars,  and 
then  it  was  like  shaking  ripe  apples  off  a  tree. 

"'Who  is  to  be  the  manager?'  Delance 
wanted  to  know.  'It's  a  big  job.' 

"I  propose  that  we  try  Harry/  I  said; 
'in  my  opinion  it  will  interest  him.  I've 
had  him  in  training  for  a  year  or  so,  and 
he's  about  ready  for  big  work.' 

"'I  don't  believe  Harry  can  do  it, 'his 
father  declared. 

"I  should  think  it  might  not  be  to  his 
taste,'  said  Bill  Warburton. 

"'But  I  have  later  and  better  informa 
tion  than  the  rest  of  you,'  I  said.  'If  you 
will  leave  the  matter  in  my  hands  you  may 
hold  me  responsible  for  the  results.' 

"They  gave  me  the  white  card.  I  could 
do  as  I  liked.  The  fact  is,  I  had  just  had  a 
letter  from  Harry  which  filled  me  with  new 
hope.  I  have  it  here." 


''CHARGE    IT" 

The  Honorable  Socrates  Potter  took 
the  letter  from  his  pocket  and  said: 

"You  see,  Harry  has  been  discovering 
America.  He  is  the  Columbus  of  our 
heiristocracy.  His  mental  map  has  been 
filled  with  great  cities  and  splendid  hotels, 
and  thrifty  towns  and  enormous  areas  of 
wheat  and  corn,  and  astonishing  distances 
and  sublime  mountain  scenes.  Moreover, 
he  has  learned  the  joys  of  a  simple  life;  he 
had  to.  Of  course,  he  knew  of  these  things, 
but  feebly  and  without  pride,  as  one  knows 
the  Tetons  who  has  never  seen  them. 
Leaving  in  May,  he  stopped  in  all  the  big 
cities,  and  finished  his  journey  from  the 
railroad  with  a  stage-ride  of  some  ninety 
miles.  Of  the  stage-ride  and  other  matters, 
he  writes  thus: 

"'On  the  front  seat  with  the  driver  sat 
a  lady  smoking  a  cigar,  who,  now  and  then, 
offered  us  a  drink  from  a  bottle.  At  her 
side  was  a  lady  with  a  wooden  leg,  and  a  hen 
in  her  hand.  You  know  every  woman  is  a 
152 


HARRY   RETURNS  TO   POINTVIEW 

lady  out  here.  The  driver  swore  at  the 
horses,  the  hen  swore  at  the  lady,  and 
several  of  the  passengers  swore  at  each 
other,  and  it  was  all  done  in  the  most 
amiable  spirit.  Two  rough-necks  sat  be 
side  me  who  kept  shooting  with  revolvers 
at  sage-hens  as  they — the  men,  not  the  hens 
— irrigated  the  tires  with  tobacco-juice. 
At  the  next  stop  I  got  into  a  row  with  a 
one-eyed  professor  of  elocution,  because  he 
said  I  carried  too  much  for  the  size  of  my 
mule,  an'  didn't  speak  proper.  He  objected 
to  my  pronunciation,  and  I  to  his  choice 
of  words.  In  the  argument  his  revolver 
took  sides  with  him.  I  got  one  of  my  toes 
lopped  with  a  bullet,  and  the  lady  who 
carried  the  cigar  and  the  bottle  took  me 
to  her  home  and  nursed  me  like  a  mother, 
and  the  lady  with  the  wooden  leg  brought 
me  strawberries  every  day  and  sang  to  me 
and  told  me  some  good  stories.  I  had 
thought  it  was  a  God-forsaken  country,  but, 
you  see,  I  was  wrong.  There's  more  real 


"CHARGE    IT" 

practical  Christianity  among  these  people 
than  I  ever  saw  before,  and  it's  hard  work 
to  be  an  ass  here.  The  way  of  the  ass  is 
full  of  trouble,  and  I  begin  to  understand 
why  you  wanted  me  to  come  out  to  Wyo 
ming.  The  people  are  rough,  but  as  kind 
as  angels.  Felt  like  turning  back,  but  these 
women  put  new  heart  in  me,  especially  the 
wooden-legged  one. 

'""We  don't  like  parlor  talk  out  here," 
she  said;  "it  ain't  considered  good  ettikit. 
Folks  don't  mind  a  little,  but  if  it  goes  too 
fur  it's  considered  insultin'  an'  everybody 
begins  to  speak  to  ye  like  he  was  talkin' 
to  a  balky  mule." 

"I  went  on  as  soon  as  I  was  able,  and 
spent  the  whole  summer  on  the  back  of  a 
cayuse.  Got  lost  in  the  mountains;  went 
hungry  and  cold  like  the  wolf,  as  Garland 
puts  it,  for  three  days ;  had  to  think  my  way 
back  to  camp.  It  was  the  best  schooling 
in  geography  and  logic  and  American 
humanity  that  I  ever  had.  Every  man  at 


HARRY   RETURNS   TO   POINTVIEW 

the  ranch,  and  the  women,  had  been  out 
hunting  for  me.  I  offered  them  money, 
but  they  woudn't  take  a  cent — the  joy 
of  seeing  me  was  enough.  They  haven't 
a  smitch  of  the  revolting  money-hunger 
of  the  average  European.  With  all  its 
faults  I  am  proud  of  my  country.  I  want 
you  to  find  a  good,  big  American  job  for 
me. 

'"I  have  been  reading  the  Bishop  of 
St.  Clare,  who  says:  "There  hath  been  more 
energy  expended  in  swaggering  about  with 
full  bellies  and  a  burden  of  needless  fat  than 
would  move  the  island  to  the  main  shore. 
If  thy  purse  be  used  to  buy  immunity  from 
work,  it  secureth  immunity  from  manhood ; 
and  what  is  a  man  without  manhood?" 

"  '  There  is  the  American  idea  for  you. 

" '  Deacon  Joe  has  got  to  change  his  mind 
about  me.  Marie  has  only  written  me 
one  letter,  and  that  was  a  frost.  If  you 
have  any  influence  with  the  girl,  don't  let 
her  get  engaged  to  that  parson/ 


"CHARGE    IT" 

Socrates  laughed  as  he  put  the  letter 
away,  and  went  on: 

"Well,  Harry  came  back,  browned  and 
brawny,  with  his  cayuse,  saddle,  and 
sombrero,  and  a  shooting-iron  half  as  long 
as  my  arm. 

"He  came  here  for  a  talk  with  me  the 
day  after  his  arrival.  The  subject  of  a  life- 
work  was  pressing  on  him. 

"'Have  you  seen  Zeb?'  was  his  first 
query. 

" '  Zeb  ?'  I  asked.    '  Who  is  Zeb  ?' 

"'That  dear  old,  irrepressible  bishop,' 
said  Harry.  'They  have  dug  him  up  and 
named  him  Zeb,  and  put  him  on  a  top  shelf 
in  the  library.  They  think  he  is  one  of  our 
great-grandfathers. ' 

"'Oh,  he  has  been  promoted/  I  re 
marked. 

"Harry  went  on: 

"'My  dog  is  responsible  for  the  reap 
pearance  of  the  bishop.  I  took  him  with 
me  that  night,  and  he  knew  where  to  find 
156 


HARRY   RETURNS   TO   POINTVIEW 

it.  Father  is  sure  that  it's  the  head  of 
old  Zeb  Delance.' 

"'Let  the  Bishop  rest  where  he  is,'  I 
suggested.  'Now  that  he  has  converted 
you,  he  will  probably  let  up.  At  least,  let 
us  hope  that  he  will  not  worry  you.  Of 
course  he  will  remind  you  of  past  follies 
every  time  you  look  at  him,  but  that  will 
do  you  no  harm.' 

'"Oh,  I  couldn't  forget  him!  Father 
has  been  reading  up  on  Zeb,  and  he  does 
nothing  but  talk  about  him.  He  has  learned 
that  the  Indians  buried  the  head  and  burned 
the  body  of  a  victim.' 

'"He  symbolizes  the  change  in  your  taste. 
Zeb  was  a  man  of  action — a  worker.  What 
do  you  propose  to  do  now?' 

"'Well,  I  have  thought  some  of  following 
Dan  into  agriculture.' 

"'Don't/  was  my  answer.  'You're  not 
the  type  for  that  kind  of  a  job.  Dan  was 
brought  up  to  work  with  his  hands.  I  fear 
that  you  would  be  a  Fifth  Avenue  farmer.' 


"CHARGE    IT 

'"Well,  what  would  you  say  to  a  plant 
for  the  manufacture  of  aeroplanes?  I 
stopped  at  Dayton  and  looked  into  the 
matter,  and  learned  to  fly.  I  have  ordered 
a  biplane,  and  it  will  be  delivered  in  the 
spring.' 

"I  vetoed  that  plan,  and  asked  where  he 
proposed  to  settle. 

"Right  here — if  possible,'  said  Harry. 

'"Good!  There's  one  thing  about  your 
family  tree  that  I  like,  and  you  ought  to  be 
proud  of  it.  Your  forebears,  having  been 
treated  with  shameless  oppression,  came  to 
these  inhospitable  shores  in  1630.  They 
needn't  have  done  it  if  they  had  been  willing 
to  knuckle  down  and  say  they  liked  crow 
when  they  didn't.  They  wouldn't  do  that, 
so  they  left  the  old  sod  and  ventured  forth 
in  a  little  sailing-vessel  on  the  mighty  deep. 
It  required  some  courage  to  do  that.  They 
landed  safely,  and  for  nearly  three  hundred 
years  their  descendants  have  lived  and 
worked  and  suffered  all  manner  of  hard- 
158 


HARRY   RETURNS  TO   POINTVIEW 

ships  in  New  England.  It's  a  proper  thing, 
Harry,  that  you  should  do  your  work 
where,  mostly,  they  did  their  work — in 
dear  old  Connecticut.' 

'"And  besides,  it's  the  home  of  Marie,' 
he  said. 

'"And  let  us  consider  what  there  is  to  be 
done  in  the  home  of  Marie,'  I  went  on. 
'Here  in  the  very  town  where  so  many  of 
your  fathers  have  lived  and  worked  we 
find  a  singular  parade  of  folly.  The  idle 
rich  from  a  near  city  are  closing  in  upon  us. 
Many  of  the  Yankees  have  acquired  prop 
erty  and  ceased  to  work.  Back  in  the 
distant  hills  they  toil  not,  but  live  from 
hand  to  mouth  in  a  pitiful  state  of  degenera 
tion.  The  work  of  the  hand  is  almost  en 
tirely  that  of  Italians,  Poles,  Hungarians, 
and  Greeks. 

'"Our  tradesmen  have  a  low  code  of 
honor.  They  overcharge  us  for  the  neces 
sities  of  life.  Many  of  them  have  been 
caught  cheating.  Our  wives  and  sons  and 
159 


-CHARGE    IT'1 

daughters  are  living  beyond  their  means,  as 
if  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  it  is  the  be 
ginning  of  dishonesty.  Our  poverty  is 
mostly  that  of  the  soul.  The  churches  are 
dying,  and  the  sabbath  is  dead.  What  we 
need  is  a  return  to  the  honor,  sanity,  and 
common  sense  of  old  New  England,  which 
gave  of  its  fullness  to  the  land  we  love. 
Let's  start  a  school  of  old-fashioned  decency 
and  Americanism.  Let's  call  it  the  Church 
of  All  Faiths  and  make  it  a  center  of  power.' 

"I  laid  the  scheme  before  him  in  all  its 
details,  and  then — 

"'I'm  with  you,'  he  said,  'and  I  think  I 
can  see  Knowles  moving  and  Deacon  Joe 
coming  down  off  his  high  horse.' 

"'Possibly  we  could  use  Knowles,'  I  sug 
gested.  'There'll  be  a  lot  of  detail.' 

'"But  only  as  a  kind  of  clerk,'  said  Harry. 

"As  a  kind  of  clerk,  I  agreed.     'We  shall 

need  a  number  of  clerks.     I  intend  that 

every   family    within    ten    miles    shall    be 

visited  at  least  once  a  week.     We  shall  not 

1 60 


HARRY   RETURNS  TO   POINTVIEW 

only  let  our  light  shine,  but  we  shall  make  it 
shine  into  every  human  heart  in  this  com 
munity.  If  they're  too  callous  we'll  punch 
a  hole  with  our  trusty  blade  and  let  the 
light  in.  The  lantern  and  the  rapier  shall 
be  our  weapons.' 

"Harry  was  full  of  enthusiasm.  He  had 
met  Marie  on  the  street,  and  she  was  glad 
to  learn  that  he  was  going  to  work. 

' ' '  Incidentally,  I  hope  to  win  your  grand 
father's  consent,'  he  had  said  to  her. 

"And  she  had  answered:  'If  you  could 
do  that  I  should  think  you  were  an  ex 
tremely  able  young  man.' 

'"And  worthy  of  the  best  girl  living?' 
Harry  had  urged. 

"'That's  too  extravagant,'  Marie  had 
said  as  she  left  him. 

"Harry  went  to  work  with  me  at  once. 
He  bought  the  rink  and  the  ground  beneath 
it  and  some  more  alongside.  We  spent 
days  and  nights  with  an  architect  making 
and  remaking  the  plans,  and  by  and  by 
161 


-CHARGE    IT" 

we  knew  that  we  were  right.  Soon  the  con 
tractor  began  his  work,  and  in  three  months 
we  had  finished  the  most  notable  meeting 
house  of  modern  times. 

"The  walls  were  tinted  a  rich  cream  color, 
the  woodwork  was  painted  white.  There 
were  new  carpets  in  the  aisles,  and  between 
them  comfortable  seats  for  nine  hundred 
people.  The  fine  old  pulpit  from  which 
Jonathan  Edwards  had  preached  his  first 
sermon  was  the  center  of  a  little  garden 
of  ferns  and  palms  and  vines  and  mosses, 
all  growing  in  good  ground,  with  a  small 
fountain  in  their  midst — a  symbol  of  purity. 
A  great  sheet  of  plate  glass  behind  the 
pulpit  showed  a  thicket  of  evergreens. 
High  above  the  pulpit  was  another  big 
sheet  of  glass,  through  which  one  got  a 
broad  view  of  the  sky,  and  it  was  framed 
in  these  words:  'The  heavens  declare  the 
glory  of  God  and  the  firmament  showeth 
his  handiwork.* 

"The  walls  were  adorned  with  handsome 
162 


HARRY   RETURNS  TO   POINTVIEW 

pictures  loaned  by  my  friends.  On  one 
wall  were  these  modern  commandments, 
most  of  which  were  gleaned  from  the 
masterly  volume  entitled  The  Life  and 
Writings  of  Robert  Delance,  Bishop  of  St. 
Clare,  which  Harry  had  found  in  a  Lon 
don  bookstore: 

"i.  'Be  grateful  unto  God,  for  He  hath 
given  thee  life,  time,  and  this  beautiful 
world.  Other  things  thou  shalt  find  for 
thyself.' 

"2.  'Be  brave  with  thy  life,  for  it  is  very 
long.' 

"3.  'Waste  no  time,  for  thy  time  is  very 
little.' 

"4.  'See  that  this  world  is  the  better  for 
thy  work  and  kindness.' 

"5.  'Doubt  not  the  truth  of  that  thy 
senses  tell  thee,  for  thy  God  is  no  deceiver. ' 

"6.  'Love  the  truth  and  live  it,  for  no  one 
is  long  deceived  by  lying.' 

"7.  'Give  not  unto  the  beast  and  neglect 
thy  brother.' 

163 


"CHARGE    IT" 

"8.  'Go  find  thy  brothers  in  the  world 
and  see  that  these  be  many,  for  a  man's 
strength  and  happiness  are  multiplied  by 
the  number  of  his  brothers. ' 

"9.  'Beware  lest  thy  wealth  come  between 
thee  and  them  and  tend  to  thine  own 
poverty  and  theirs.* 

"10.  'Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto 
thee,  for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven.* 

"The  simple-hearted  old  Bishop  had  just 
the  philosophy  we  needed.  It  seemed  to 
have  been  carefully  designed  to  meet  the  in 
ventiveness  of  the  modern  sinner.  He  was 
turning  out  well  and  had  already  exerted  a 
wholesome  influence  on  the  character  of 
Harry.  Would  that  all  ancestors  were  as 
well  chosen! 

"We  did  not  wish  to  hinder  the  other 
churches,  and  that  spirit  went  into  all  our 
plans.  First,  then,  we  decided  that  our 
services  should  begin  at  twelve  o'clock 
every  Sunday,  and  close  at  one  or  before 
twenty  minutes  after  one.  That  gave  our 
164 


HARRY   RETURNS  TO   POINTViEW 

parishioners  a  chance  to  go  to  the  other 
churches  if  they  wanted  to.  I  traveled 
from  Boston  to  St.  Louis,  and  returned  via 
Washington,  to  engage  talent  for  our  pulpit. 
I  wanted  the  best  that  this  land  afforded, 
and  was  prepared  to  pay  its  price.  I  en 
gaged  nine  ministers,  distinguished  for 
eloquence  and  learning,  three  Governors, 
the  Mayor  of  a  Western  city,  two  United 
States  Senators,  one  Congressman,  and  a  Jus 
tice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  land.  They 
were  all  great-souled  men,  who  had  shown 
in  word  and  action  a  touch  of  the  spirit 
of  Jesus  Christ.  Some  of  them  had  been 
throwing  light  into  dark  places  and  driving 
money-changers  from  the  temple  and  cast 
ing  out  devils.  They  were  all  qualified  to 
enlighten  and  lift  up  our  souls. 

"I  asked  that  their  lessons  should  be 
drawn  from  the  lives  of  the  modern  prophets 
— Abraham  Lincoln,  Silas  Wright,  Daniel 
Webster,  Charles  Sumner,  Henry  Clay, 
Noah  Webster,  George  William  Curtis, 

12  165 


"CHARGE    IT' 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  Sidney  Lanier, 
Horace  Greeley,  and  others  like  them.  What 
I  sought  most  was  an  increase  of  the  love 
of  honor  and  the  respect  for  industry  in  our 
young  men  and  women.  Holiness  was  a 
thing  for  later  consideration,  it  seemed  to 
me. 

"I  put  a  full-page  advertisement  in  each 
local  paper,  which  read  about  as  follows: 

'"The  Church  of  All  Faiths. 

"'Built  especially  for  sinners  and  for 
good  people  who  wish  to  be  better. 

"'Will  begin  its  work  in  this  community 
Sunday,  June  igth,  at  twelve  o'clock,  with 
a  sermon  by  Socrates  Potter,  Esq.,  of 
Pointview,  in  which  he  will  set  forth  his 
view  of  what  a  church  should  do,  and  an 
account  of  what  this  church  proposes  to  do, 
for  its  parishioners.  Other  churches  are 
cordially  invited  to  worship,  and  to  work 
with  us  for  the  good  of  Pointview.' 

"The  curiosity  of  all  the  people  had  been 
whetted  to  a  keen  edge.  They  had  begged 
166 


HARRY   RETURNS   TO   POINTVIEW 

for  information,  but  Betsey  and  I  had  said 
that  they  should  know  all  about  it  in  due 
time.  I  had  given  my  plan  to  the  con 
tributors  only,  and  they  were  to  keep  still 
about  it. 

"Sometimes  silence  is  the  best  advertise 
ment,  and  certain  men  who  seem  to  be  so 
modest  that  they  are  shocked  by  the  least 
publicity  are  the  greatest  advertisers  in  the 
world.  The  man  who  hides  his  candle  un 
der  a  bushel  is  apt  to  be  the  one  whose 
candle  is  best  known.  So  it  happened 
with  us.  Nine  hundred  and  sixteen  people 
filled  the  seats  in  our  church  that  morning  by 
twelve  o'clock,  and  two  hundred  more  were 
trying  to  get  in. 

"At  the  next  service  an  honored  minister 
whose  soul  is  even  greater  than  his  fame 
preached  for  us,  and  that  week  a  petition 
came  to  me,  signed  by  six  hundred  citizens, 
complaining  that  the  hour  was  inconvenient, 
and  asking  that  it  be  changed  to  10.30 
A.M.  I  believe  in  the  voice  of  the  people, 
167 


"CHARGE    IT' 

and  obeyed  it;  but  I  knew  what  would 
happen,  and  it  did.  The  other  churches 
were  deserted  and  silent.  One  by  one 
their  ministers  came  to  see  me — all  save 
one  old  gentleman  in  whom  the  brimstone 
of  wrath  had  begun  to  burn  more  fiercely. 
We  needed  and  were  glad  to  have  the  help 
of  two  of  them.  There  were  the  sick  and 
the  poor  to  be  visited;  there  were  weddings 
and  funerals  and  countless  details  in  the 
organization  of  the  new  church  to  be  at 
tended  to. 

"I  ought  to  tell  you  that  a  curious  and 
unexpected  thing  had  happened.  Fisher- 
folk,  street  gamins,  caddies,  loafers  on  the 
docks  and  in  the  livery  stables,  million 
aires  and  million-heiresses — people  who  had 
thought  themselves  either  above  or  below 
religion — came  to  our  meetings.  Each  re 
sembled  in  numbers  a  political  rally. 

"We  have  started  an  improvement  school 
for  Sunday  evenings,  in  which  the  great 
story  is  told  in  lectures  and  fine  photo- 
168 


HARRY  RETURNS  TO   POINTVIEW 

graphs  thrown  on  a  screen.  And  not  only 
the  great  story,  but  any  story  calculated 
to  inspire  and  enlighten  the  youthful  mind. 
The  best  of  the  world's  work  and  art  and 
certain  of  the  great  novels  will  be  pre 
sented  in  this  way.  I  am  going  to  get 
the  great  men  of  the  world  to  give  us 
three-minute  sermons  on  the  phonograph. 
Thus  I  hope  to  make  it  possible  for  our 
people  to  hear  the  voices  and  sentiments 
of  kings,  presidents,  premiers,  statesmen, 
and  prophets — the  men  and  women  who  are 
making  history. 

"We  have  started  a  small  country  club 
where  poor  boys  and  girls  can  enjoy  billiards, 
bowling,  golf,  and  tennis.  Any  boy  or 
girl  in  this  town  who  has  a  longing  for 
better  things  is  sought  and  found  by  our 
ministers,  and  all  kinds  of  encouragement 
are  offered.  People  and  clergy  of  almost 
every  faith  that  is  known  here  in  Pointview 
are  working  side  by  side  for  one  purpose. 
Think  of  that!  The  revolution  has  been 
169 


"CHARGE    IT' 

complete  and  mainly  peaceful.  As  to  the 
expense  of  it  all,  we  tax  the  rich,  and  for 
the  rest  we  temper  the  wind  to  the  length 
of  their  wool. 

"Of  course,  there  were  certain  people 
who  didn't  like  it,  and  among  them  was 
Deacon  Joe.  He  and  four  others  hired  a 
minister,  and  sat  in  lonely  sorrow  in  the 
old  church  every  Sunday,  until  the  expense 
sickened  them.  Then  the  Deacon  got  mad 
at  the  town,  and  refused  to  be  seen  in  it. 

" Reach  everybody,'  had  been  one  of 
our  mottoes,  and  Deacon  Joe  said  that  he 
guessed  we  wouldn't  reach  him." 


XVI 

WHICH      PRESENTS     AN      INCIDENT     IN     OUR 

CAMPAIGN       AGAINST       NEW       NEW 

ENGLAND 

"  \  11  TE  had  some  adventures  in  new  New 
V  V  England  which  ought  to  be  set  down. 
Here's  one  of  them. 

"The  old  village  of  Trent  lies  back  in  the 
hills,  a  little  journey  from  Pointview,  on  the 
shores  of  a  pleasant  river.  To  the  un 
knowing  traveler,  who  approaches  from 
either  hilltop,  it  has  a  peaceful  and  in 
viting  look.  But  the  rutted,  rocky  road 
begins  at  once  to  excite  suspicion.  A  bad 
road  is  an  indication  and  a  producer  of 
degeneracy  in  man  and  beast.  It  tends  to 
profanity,  and  if  it  went  far  would  probably 
lead  to  hell.  Trent  itself  is  one  of  the  little 
171 


"CHARGE    IT' 

modern  hells  of  New  England.  There  are 
the  venerable  and  neatly  fashioned  houses 
of  the  old-time  Yankee — the  peaked  roofs 
and  gables,  the  columns,  the  cozy  veran 
das,  the  garden  spaces.  But  the  old-time 
Yankees  are  gone.  The  well-kept  gardens 
are  no  more.  Many  of  the  houses  are 
going  to  ruin.  One  is  an  Italian  tenement. 
The  others  are  inhabited  by  coachmen, 
chauffeurs,  gardeners,  mill-hands,  and  de 
generate  Yankees.  The  inn  is  a  mere  bar 
room.  Sounds  of  revelry  and  the  odor  of 
stale  beer  come  out  of  it.  In  front  are 
teams  of  burden,  abandoned,  for  a  time, 
by  their  drivers,  and  sundry  human  signs 
of  decay  loafing  in  the  shadow  of  the  old 
lindens.  Among  them  are  the  seedy  rem 
nants  of  a  once  noble  race.  They  are 
fettered  by  'rheumatiz'  and  the  disordered 
liver.  They  move  like  boats  dragging  their 
anchors.  To  make  life  tolerable  their  imag 
inations  need  assistance.  They  are  like 
the  Flub  Dubs  of  lost  Atlantis.  Each 
172 


AN  INCIDENT:  NEW  NEW  ENGLAND 

imagines  himself  the  greatest  man  in  the 
village.  They  talk  in  loud  words.  They 
quarrel  and  fight  over  the  crown.  So  it 
has  been  a  brawling,  besotted  community. 

"Trent's  leading  citizen  is  a  Yankee 
politician  who  owns  most  of  its  real  estate 
and  derives  a  profit  from  its  lawless  traffic. 
Trent  has  been  his  enterprise. 

"Knowles  went  over  there  one  day  to 
conduct  a  funeral,  which  was  interrupted 
by  a  dog-fight  under  the  coffin  and  nearly 
broken  up  by  a  row  over  two  dollars  which 
had  been  found  in  a  pocket  of  the  dead  man. 

"We  opened  a  club-house  next  to  the 
hotel,  and  began  a  campaign  for  the  re 
generation  of  Trent.  Soon  we  discovered 
that  its  one  officer  was  unwilling  to  arrest 
offenders  against  law  and  order.  We  had 
him  removed  and  a  new  man  put  in  his 
place.  This  man  was  set  upon  and  severely 
beaten,  and  lost  interest  in  the  good  work. 
Then  Harry  applied  for  the  job  and  got  it. 
He  took  with  him  a  force  of  husky  young 


"CHARGE    IT' 

men — mostly  college  boys.  The  first  day 
on  duty  he  arrested  in  the  street  a  drunken 
man  who  carried  in  his  hands  a  small  sack 
of  potatoes.  The  latter  whistled  for  help, 
and  the  enemies  of  law  and  order  swarmed 
out  of  their  haunts.  Harry  had  become 
an  expert  ball  pitcher,  noted  for  speed  and 
accuracy.  He  floored  his  man  and  took 
possession  of  the  potatoes,  with  which  he 
proceeded  to  defend  himself.  Only  two 
balls  were  pitched,  but  they  held  the  enemy 
in  check  until  Harry's  deputies  had  rushed 
out  of  the  club-house.  A  flying  wedge 
scattered  the  crowd.  No  further  violence 
was  needed.  The  ruffians  saw  that  he 
meant  business  and  had  the  nerve  and 
muscle  to  carry  it  through,  and  nothing 
more  was  necessary — just  then. 

1  'They  took  the  drunken  man  to  the 
lock-up,  and  came  back  and  got  a  bar 
tender,  and  led  him  in  the  same  path. 
Harry  has  the  situation  well  in  hand,  and  is 
the  most  popular  man  in  our  community. 
i74 


AN  INCIDENT:  NEW  NEW  ENGLAND 

Every  day  we  have  items  to  put  to  his 
credit,  and  nothing  to  charge  against  his 
reputation.  There's  something  going  on 
at  the  club  every  evening,  and  the  rooms 
are  crowded.  Those  men  who  had  sat  day 
by  day  brawling  under  the  lindens  now 
spend  most  of  their  leisure  in  the  reading 
and  card  rooms.  Peace  reigns  in  Trent. 
Such  is  the  power  of  united  benevolence 
working  with  the  strong  hand  and  the 
courageous  spirit." 


XVII 

WHICH    PRESENTS    A    DECISIVE    INCIDENT    IN 

OUR      CAMPAIGN       AGAINST       OLD      NEW 

ENGLAND 

HARRY  was  pretty  well  disabled  with 
affection  for  a  time.  He  was  like  a 
Yankee  with  the  'rheumatiz,'  and  you 
know  when  a  Yankee  gets  hold  of  the 
'rheumatiz'  he  hangs  on.  It  don't  often 
get  away  from  him.  It  becomes  an  asset 
—a  conservational  asset — an  ever-present 
help  in  time  of  haying. 

"  Since  Harry's  return  the  tactics  of 
Marie  had  been  faultless.  Her  eyes  had 
said,  'Come  on/  while  her  words  had  firmly 
held  him  off.  He  shook  the  tree  every 
time  they  met,  but  the  squirrel  wouldn't 
come  down. 

176 


AN  INCIDENT:    OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 

"It  was  a  hard  part  for  Marie  to  play, 
between  the  pressure  of  two  handsome  boys 
and  her  duty  to  grandpapa.  The  Reverend 
Robert  had  won  the  favor  of  the  old  gentle 
man  by  turning  from  tennis  to  agriculture 
for  exercise.  He  had  gone  over  to  the 
Benson  farm  and  helped  with  the  spring's 
work;  he  had  supper  there  every  Sunday 
evening,  after  which  he  conducted  a  little 
service  for  the  Deacon's  benefit.  He  was 
pressing,  as  they  say  in  golf,  and  it  didn't 
improve  his  game.  I  saw  that  Marie 
was  not  quite  so  fond  of  him.  I  had  main 
tained  an  attitude  of  strict  neutrality,  but 
could  not  fail  to  observe  that  Marie  had 
begun  to  lean. 

'"You  have  captured  the  rest  of  Point- 
view,  and  you  ought  to  be  able  to  take 
Benson's  Hill,'  Marie  had  said  to  Harry. 
'Grandfather  is  the  last  enemy  of  your 
crusade.' 

"It  was  a  timely  touch  on  the  accelerator, 
and  Harry  began  to  speed  up  a  little. 
177 


"CHARGE    IT" 

"  'The  farm  is  so  well  defended,  and  there's 
nothing  I  dread  so  much  as  a  hickory  cane,' 
the  boy  had  answered.  'The  last  visit 
I  made  to  the  farm  I  wondered  whether  I 
was  going  to  convert  him  to  my  way  of 
thinking,  or  he  was  going  to  convert  me  to 
jelly.' 

"  Indeed,  Deacon  Joe  stood  firm  as  a 
mountain.  People  were  saying  that  the 
minister  would  win  in  a  walk,  when  Marie 
converted  her  grandfather  by  the  most 
remarkable  bit  of  woman's  strategy  that  I 
ever  observed.  It  was  Napoleonic. 

"One  day  in  May,  Harry  came,  much 
excited,  to  my  office.  Deacon  Joe  was  about 
to  move  to  his  island,  a  mile  or  so  off  shore. 
He  was  going  to  take  Marie  with  him  for 
an  indefinite  period.  No  boat  would  be 
permitted  to  land  there  except  his  own  and 
the  Reverend  Robert's.  Marie  would  be 
a  sort  of  prisoner.  That  day  she  had 
told  him  of  the  plan  of  her  grandfather. 
In  Harry's  opinion  Knowles  had  suggested  it. 
178 


AN  INCIDENT:  OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 

"  'Where  is  the  girl's  mother?'  I  asked. 

"'On  some  Cook's  tour  in  Europe,  and 
the  old  man  is  crazy  as  a  March  hare,'  said 
my  young  friend.  'He's  got  a  lot  of  bull 
dogs  over  there,  and  his  hired  men  have 
been  instructed  to  shoot  a  hole  in  any 
boat  that  comes  near.' 

"I  went  over  to  the  Benson  homestead 
that  afternoon,  and  found  Deacon  Joe 
sitting  on  the  piazza.' 

"'How  are  you?'  I  asked. 

"'Not  very  stout/  said  he;  'heart  flutters 
like  a  ketched  bird.' 

'"What  are  you  doing  for  it?' 

'"Doctor  give  me  some  medicine;  I 
fergit  the  name  of  it,  but  it  is  the  stuff  they 
use  to  blow  up  safes  with.' 

"'Nitroglycerin!  The  very  thing!  I 
hope  they  will  succeed  in  blowing  up  your  safe. ' 

"I  was  pretty  close  to  the  old  man,  and 
was  always  very  frank  with  him.     He  liked 
opposition,  and  was  as  fond  of  warfare  as 
an  Old  Testament  hero. 
179 


-CHARGE    IT' 

"'What,  sir?'  he  asked. 

"'There  are  some  folks  that  have  got  to 
be  blowed  up  before  you  can  get  an  old 
idea  out  of  their  heads,'  I  went  on.  'They 
are  locked  up  with  rust.  That's  what's 
the  matter  with  you,  Deacon.  Your  brain 
needs  to  be  blowed  open  an'  aired.  You 
stored  it  full  of  ideas  sixty  years  ago  and 
locked  the  door  for  fear  they'd  get  away. 
They  should  have  been  taken  out  and 
sorted  over  at  least  once  a  year,  and  some 
thrown  into  the  fire  to  make  room  for  better 
ones.  If  life  does  you  any  good,  if  it  really 
teaches  you  anything,  your  brain  must  keep 
changing  its  contents.' 

"The  Deacon  hammered  the  table  with 
his  cane,  as  he  shouted : 

'"You  cussed  fool  of  a  lawyer!  Don't 
you  know  that  truth  never  changes  ?  Truth, 
sir,  is  eternal.' 

"Then  I  took  the  bat.  'Truth  often 
changes,  but  error  is  eternal,'  I  said.  'You 
know  when  you  want  to  prove  anything, 
180 


AN  INCIDENT:   OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 

these  days,  you  quote  from  the  memoirs 
of  a  great  man.  Well,  I  was  reading  the 
memoirs  of  the  late  Doctor  Godfrey  Vogel- 
dam  Guph  not  long  ago.  He  told  of  a  man 
who  was  very  singular,  but  not  so  singular  as 
the  doctor  seemed  to  think.  This  man  knew 
more  than  any  human  being  has  a  right 
to  know.  He  knew  the  plans  of  God,  and 
had  formed  an  unalterable  opinion  about 
all  his  neighbors.  Then  he  locked  up  his 
mind  and  guarded  it  night  and  day,  for  fear 
that  somebody  would  break  in  and  carry 
off  its  contents.  And  it  did  seem  as  if 
people  wanted  to  get  hold  of  his  treasure, 
for  they  often  came  and  asked  about  it, 
and  some  even  questioned  its  value.  He 
said,  "Away  with  you — truth  is  eternal, 
and  my  soul  is  full  and  I  will  part  with  none 
of  it." 

' ' '  Meanwhile  the  truth  about  things 
around  him  began  to  change.  Neighbor 
Smith  became  a  good  man.  Neighbor 
Brown  became  a  bad  man.  Priscilla 

13  r8i 


-CHARGE    IT" 

Jones,  who  had  been  a  vain  and  foolish 
woman,  was  one  of  the  saints  of  God.  The 
foundations  of  the  world  had  changed.  In 
a  generation  it  had  grown  millions  of  years 
older  and  different — wonderfully  different! 
Even  God  himself  had  changed,  it  would 
seem.  His  methods  were  not  as  people 
had  thought  them.  His  character  was 
milder.  Everything  had  changed  but  this 
one  man.  Now  when  he  died  and  came  to 
St.  Peter,  the  latter  said  to  him: 

•  " <"  Who  were  your  friends ?' ' 

•  '"iThe   new-comer   thought   a   minute, 
and  mentioned  the  names  of  some  people  who 
had  been  long  dead.    "  They  know  the  truth 
about  me,"  he  said. 

•  '""Ah,  but  the  truth  changes,  and  they 
haven't  seen  you  in  many  years,"  said  St. 
Peter. 

'  '""But  I  have  not  changed,"  said  the 
man.  "I  am  just  as  when  they  saw  me." 

'""Then  you  are  a  fool  or  the  chief  of 
sinners,"  said  St.  Peter.     "Behold  a  man 
182 


AN  INCIDENT:   OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 

as  changeless  as  the  flint-stone,  who  has 
made  no  friends  in  over  forty  years !  That 
is  all  I  need  to  know  about  you.  Take 
either  gate  you  please." 

''"'One  leads  to  Heaven— doesn't  it?" 
said  the  new-comer,  in  great  alarm. 

"'"  Yes,  but  you  wouldn't  recognize  the 
place.  There  isn't  a  soul  in  paradise  that 
cares  which  way  you  go — not  a  soul  in  all 
its  multitude  that  will  be  glad  to  see  you. 
They  have  better  company.  Stranger!  go 
which  way  you  please,  Heaven  will  be  as 
uncomfortable  as  hell." 

"  Deacon  Joe  gave  me  close  attention, 
and  I  saw  that  my  sword  had  nicked  him  a 
little.  Anything  that  affected  his  hope  of 
Paradise  was  sure  to  engage  his  thought. 
He  shook  his  head,  and  said  that  he  didn't 
believe  it.  But  he  couldn't  fool  me.  I 
knew  that  the  seed  of  change  had  struck 
into  him. 

"I  gave  him  another  thrust.  'Deacon, 
you  knew  Harry  Delance  when  he  was  a 
183 


"CHARGE    IT' 

fool.  But  the  truth  about  him  has  changed. 
He  is  now  a  hard-working,  level-headed 
young  fellow,  and  you  ought  to  be  his 
friend/ 

'"Wai,  I  like  the  way  he  cuffed  them 
fellers  over  at  Trent,'  said  the  Deacon. 
'He  pounded  'em  noble — that's  sartin. 
Mebbe  if  he  licks  a  few  more  men  I'll  begin 
to  like  him.' 

'"Give  him  a  chance,'  was  my  answer. 
'I  hear  that  you  are  going  to  move  for  the 
summer.' 

"'Goin'  to  my  island  to-morrow,'  said 
Deacon  Joe.  'I'm  sick  of  the  autymobiles 
an'  the  young  spendthrifts  hangin'  around 
Marie,  an'  her  extravagance,  an'  the  new 
church  nonsense,  an'  the  other  goin's-on. 
I've  got  a  good  house  there,  an'  Marie  an' 
I  are  goin'  to  rest  an'  stroll  around  without 
bein'  run  over  until  her  mother  comes  back. 
The  only  trouble  I  have  there  is  the  hired 
men.  They  rob  me  right  an'  left.  I  wish 
somebody  would  lick  them.' 
184 


AN  INCIDENT:  OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 

"'You  really  need  a  young  man  like 
Harry,'  I  urged.  'And  Marie  needs  him. 
She'll  be  lonely  over  there.' 

'"Not  a  bit,'  said  the  Deacon.  'She'll 
have  a  saddle-horse,  and  young  Knowles 
can  come  over  once  a  week,  if  he  wants  to. 
I  hear  he's  done  splendid  lately.' 

'"He's  doing  well,  but  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  Harry  is  the  better  man,'  I  said, 
taking  sides  for  the  first  time. 

"'I  don't  believe  it,'  was  the  answer  of 
Deacon  Joe.  'Knowles  is  getting  pretty 
sensible,  and  his  voice  is  stronger.' 

"The  Deacon  moved  next  day,  and  when 
Sunday  came  I  went  over  in  a  boat  with 
the  Reverend  Robert  at  eight  o'clock  in 
the  morning.  I  was  taking  a  stroll  on  the 
beach  when  I  met  him,  and  he  asked  me  to 
go  along.  It  was  just  a  social  call,  he  ex 
plained.  Incidentally,  he  was  going  to 
pray  and  read  a  Scripture  lesson  at  the 
Deacon's  request.  As  we  left  the  dock, 
Harry  came  riding  by  on  one  of  his  thorough- 
185 


'  'CHARGE    IT" 

breds,  and  I  waved  my  hand  to  him.  When 
we  got  to  the  Deacon's  landing,  I  said  to 
Robert: 

"'As  I  am  not  invited,  perhaps  you  had 
better  announce  me  to  Deacon  Joe,  while 
I  stay  here  in  the  boat/ 

"'All  right,'  he  said,  as  he  gaily  jumped 
ashore  and  tied  the  painter  rope. 

"Robert  hurried  in  the  direction  of  the 
little  house,  and  had  covered  half  the 
distance,  when  a  bulldog  came  sneaking 
toward  him.  Robert  saw  the  dog,  and  ran 
for  a  tree.  He  was  making  handsome  prog 
ress  up  the  trunk  of  the  tree  when  the  dog 
reached  him,  and,  seizing  a  leg  of  his  trousers, 
began  to  surge  backward.  The  cloth  part 
ed  at  the  knee,  and  between  the  pulling  of 
man  and  dog,  Robert  lost  about  all  the 
lower  end  of  one  trousers-leg.  The  hired 
man  came  running  out  with  some  more 
dogs,  and  said: 

"'It's  all  right,  Mr.  Knowles,  you  can 
come  down.     I  hope  he  didn't  hurt  you/ 
186 


AN  INCIDENT:  OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 

'"Excuse  me,'  said  the  young  man,  'but 
I  think  I'll  stay  here  a  while.' 

"  Three  dogs  stood  at  the  foot  of  the 
tree  looking  anxiously  upward. 

'"They  won't  hurt  you  while  I'm  here,' 
said  the  hired  man. 

"'I  won't  take  any  chances,'  said'Robert. 
'Go  shut  up  your  lions,  and  I'll  come  down.' 

'"Who's  that  in  the  boat?'  the  hired  man 
asked. 

'"Mr.  Potter,'  said  Robert. 

'"Well,  he  mustn't  land  'less  the  old  man 
says  so — I  don't  care  who  he  is.' 

"Just  then  the  hired  man  changed  his 
position  suddenly,  and  stood  looking  into 
the  sky.  I  turned  and  saw  an  aeroplane 
coming  down  like  some  great  bird  from  the 
hills,  behind  the  village.  It  sailed  high 
above  the  spires,  and  coasted  down  to  a 
level  some  fifty  feet  above  the  water-plane 
between  shore  and  island.  In  a  minute 
or  so  it  roared  over  me,  circled  the  point, 
and  came  down  in  the  open  field  that  faced 
187 


"CHARGE    IT' 

the  Deacon's  cottage.  Dogs  and  chickens 
flew  and  ran  in  great  confusion  as  it  swooped 
to  earth.  I  knew  that  Harry  and  his  new 
flier  had  reached  the  island  of  Deacon  Joe, 
and  I  hurried  ashore  to  see — well,  'to  see 
what  I  could  see,'  as  the  old  song  has  it. 
Harry  jumped  from  his  seat.  The  hired  man 
ran  toward  him.  Deacon  Joe  and  Marie 
and  a  woman-servant  hurried  out-of-doors. 

"In  less  time  than  it  takes  to  tell  it, 
Harry  had  licked  the  hired  man,  and  kicked 
two  dogs  in  the  belly  till  they  ran  for  life, 
and  shot  another  one,  and  was  chasing  a 
second  hired  man  around  the  wood-shed. 
Not  being  able  to  run  fast  enough  to  do  fur 
ther  damage,  Harry  came  to  the  astonished 
group  in  front  of  the  house  and  caught 
Marie  in  his  arms  and  kissed  her. 

"Then  he  turned  to  the  Deacon,  and  said : 
'Sir,  I  will  keep  off  your  island  if  you  wish, 
but  I  do  not  propose  to  be  bluffed  when  I 
come  to  pay  my  compliments  to  you  and 
Marie.' 

188 


HE     LOOKED     LIKE     A     MAN     WITH     A     WOODEN     LEG 


AN  INCIDENT:   OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 

"Deacon  Joe  was  dumb  with  astonish 
ment.  The  young  minister  came  down 
out  of  his  tree  and  walked  slowly  toward 
the  group,  with  rags  flapping  over  one  ex 
tremity  of  his  union-suit.  He  looked  like 
a  man  with  a  wooden  leg. 

"'How  did  ye  get  here?'  Deacon  Joe 
demanded  of  Harry. 

"'Jumped  from  the  top  of  Delance's  Hill 
and  landed  right  here,'  said  the  latter. 

"'In  that  awful-lookin'  thing?'  the 
Deacon  asked,  pointing  with  his  cane  and 
squinting  at  the  big  biplane. 

"'In  that  thing,'  Harry  answered. 

"'How  long  did  it  take  ye?' 

"'About  five  minutes/ 
"It's  impossible,'   said  the  Deacon,  as 
he  approached  the  biplane  and  began  to 
look  at  it. 

"But  you'll  see  me  jump  back  again 
in  a  little  while,'  Harry  assured  him. 

"'Geehanniker!'   the  Deacon  exclaimed. 
'Jumped  from  the  top  of  Delance's  Hill  an' 
189 


"CHARGE    IT' 

licked  my  caretaker  an*  chased  a  hired  man 
an'  sp'ilt  two  dogs  an'  treed  the  minister 
and  kissed  the  lady  o'  the  house— all  in 
about  ten  minutes.  I  guess  you're  a  good 
deal  of  a  feller.' 

"It  was  the  kind  of  thing  that  warmed 
the  warrior  soul  of  the  Deacon. 

"  'Hello — here's  a  dead  dog,'  said  Harry. 
'If  you'll  have  one  of  the  men  bring  me  a 
shovel  I'll  bury  him  there  in  the  garden. 
Meanwhile  you  may  tell  me  how  much 
I  owe  you  for  the  two  dogs.' 

'"I  guess  about  twenty-five  dollars,' 
said  the  Deacon. 

"'How  much  off  for  cash?'  Harry  asked. 

"'Wai,  sir,  if  you  ain't  goin'  to  ask  me 
to  charge  it,  ten  dollars  would  do,'  the 
Deacon  allowed. 

"'There's  a  wonderful  power  in  cash,' 
said  Harry,  as  he  produced  the  money. 

"'You're  gettin'  some  sense  in  your 
head,'  said  the  Deacon. 

"The  shovel  was  brought;  and  Harry, 
190 


AN  INCIDENT:    OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 

who  had  expected  to  shoot  a  dog  or  two 
and  had  been  practising  for  this  very  act, 
put  his  victim  under  three  feet  of  soil  in 
as  many  minutes.  That  also  pleased  the 
Deacon. 

'"Purty  cordy,  too,'  the  latter  said,  as 
he  turned  to  Marie.  'Now,  girl,  take  your 
choice.  I  want  to  know  which  is  which, 
an*  stop  bein'  bothered  about  it.' 

"She  made  her  choice  then  and  there, 
and  as  to  which  of  the  two  it  may  have  been 
you  will  have  no  doubt  when  I  tell  you  that 
Marie  had  planned  every  detail  in  this  bit 
of  strategy  and  Harry  had  been  man 
enough  to  put  it  through. 

"'You  know  Zeb's  commandment  has 
been  a  help  to  me,'  he  said,  when  I  offered 
congratulations.  ' ' '  Be  brave  with  your  life, 
for  it  is  very  long." 

"The  Deacon  has  changed.     His  heart 

and  mind  are  open.     Every  Sunday  you 

may  see  him  in  a  front  seat,  drinking  at  the 

new  fount  of  inspiration;  and  it  is  a  rule  of 

191 


"CHARGE    IT" 

his  life  to  make  a  new  friend  every  day. 
I'm  inclined  to  think  that  the  old  man  has 
been  saved  at  last. 

"Yes,  we  try  to  reach  everybody  in  one 
way  or  another." 


THE   END 


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